


The Tribulation of Chuck

by maskedfangirl



Series: Chuck 'Verse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, Best Friends, Bromance, Everybody Dies, Fallen!Castiel, Hugs, Humor, M/M, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Sam's eco-friendly demon army, There are no take-backs in the apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-22
Updated: 2010-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maskedfangirl/pseuds/maskedfangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, maybe the world-saving adventure isn't going quite as planned. But Missouri's got a holy houseguest, Chuck thinks he might finally have a handle on his visions, and Lucifer is going down. Chuck hopes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
  
Chuck Shurley had decided to become a writer when he was eleven years old. It was an unseasonably cold March day, and in spite of the icy wind gusting down the street, he took each step on the walk home with a grin and a bounce. In his backpack, sandwiched between his math homework and civics textbook, was a short story he had written, a red A+ scrawled on it in his English teacher’s handwriting. The story was about an eleven-year-old boy whose best friend was a talking dinosaur. The comments in the margins gushed about his originality and talent for characterization. His teacher thought he might have a future as a writer. Chuck hadn’t considered the career before, but the moment his teacher suggested it, he knew it was what he needed to do with his life. The idea of being a writer slotted into place so neatly in his mind, it was like he was made for it.   
  
Chuck’s parents, however, were unimpressed.   
  
“Why is there a dinosaur?” his father asked, handing the pages back with a frown.  
  
“Because it’s fantasy,” Chuck said.  
  
“It’s not fantasy,” said his mother. “It’s you with a dinosaur. No one wants to read this.”  
  
That was the first time in his career as a writer that Chuck faltered for words. It would be far from the last. Hugging his story to his chest, he retreated up to his bedroom to play with his Atari and brood. So his parents didn’t approve of his writing. Well, then, he just wouldn’t show it to them anymore. If they didn’t want to see it, that was their loss, not his.   
  
Still, he made it a personal rule not to write himself into his stories. The rule stuck for two decades, until the hand guiding the Winchester Gospels pushed him into his own text - and even then, Chuck pushed back, drawing himself into the background and back off the page. He didn’t belong in the action on the page; it was merely his job to record it.   
  
The story about the boy and his dinosaur found its way into a drawer of the hand-me-down bureau in Chuck’s living room. When the Archangel burst through his kitchen wall, it overturned furniture and ripped drawers from their tracks. The story wound up across the room, wedged halfway beneath the couch that Castiel fell over. In his rush to get the newly fallen angel to Bobby’s with the rest of his protagonists, Chuck didn’t spare a second to pick it up.  
  
At this particular moment, Chuck was glad he’d left that story where it was. All of his current problems could be traced back to that one stupid little story. If it weren’t for that story, he never would’ve gotten into writing, and maybe he could’ve avoided being called as a prophet. If it weren’t for that story, he never would’ve wasted ten years hunting down publication only to waste it churning out some higher power’s Winchester fan fiction. If it weren’t for that story, he wouldn’t be slouched over Missouri’s kitchen table at 7am after a sleepless night, picking at waffles he should be excited about and trying to keep himself from staring at the messiah in the chair across from him.  
  
Jesus Christ, AKA the Lamb of God, AKA the surprise guest star who’d appeared behind the couch last night when Castiel took off, was echoing Chuck’s posture, except he was holding the fork wrong. And he wasn’t talking. Not that Chuck was exactly a Chatty Cathy this morning, but he’d been around Jesus for most of the twelve hours since he’d shown up, and the guy hadn’t said a thing. Not a “Hello,” not a “Would you mind if I camped out in your fort all night?” and not even an “Oooh, waffles!”   
  
If waffles didn’t get a vocal reaction, Chuck didn’t know what would. Clearly, there was something wrong with the guy. Was it blasphemous to think that about Jesus? Chuck shrugged to himself. If so, it probably wasn’t as bad as the dozens of  _Penny Arcade_  strips that showed Jesus dropping the f-bomb and pwning noobs. His beta reader had sent him a bunch of those strips when he started writing the Judeo-Christian stuff. He still wasn’t quite sure how to pronounce “noobs.” He was more of a tabletop RPG man, himself.  
  
“More syrup, honey?” Missouri extended her hand to Jesus, the maple syrup bottle dangling from one finger. He nodded without meeting her eyes and took it.   
  
“Why do you think he doesn’t talk?” Chuck asked, resting his cheek on his hand.   
  
“Chuck!” Missouri scolded.  
  
“What? He doesn’t care if we talk about him. Look at him.”  
  
Jesus was more interested in filling each of the square pockets in his waffle with exactly the same amount of syrup.   
  
Missouri sighed, setting down her fork. “I think…something happened to him.”  
  
“Duh,” Chuck said, laughing into a mouthful of waffle. “You’ve seen the statues, right? Stigmata’s a hell of a trauma.”  
  
“No, I mean…” She paused, her lips repositioning themselves carefully. “I had an uncle who came back from Vietnam in a similar state. He had the same sort of feel to him - like something in him had been snuffed out.”  
  
Chuck leaned forward, lowering his voice even though he knew Jesus could hear. “Missouri, can you read him?”  
  
“Some,” she said, and shook her head. “Something bad happened to him - a long, drawn-out trauma, feels like.” She paused, thinking. “Maybe something the angels did to him?”  
  
“No, they’re chaotic good, at worst. They wouldn’t hurt their own messiah.” In fact, Chuck knew from his visions the angels were counting on Christ to win the apocalypse they’d kicked into motion. No, they had no reason to break him. A thought clicked into place, and he swore, dropping his face into his hands. “We did this.”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Chuck, but I most certainly didn’t—”  
  
“Humanity. The whole warmongering, illogical, unsavable lot of us. I mean, Christ!” Jesus looked up, and Chuck waved a hand. “No, not you. It’s a—a figure of speech, but I can see how that’d be confusing.” Jesus went back to his syrup adventure, and Chuck sank back in his chair, his arms on the table in front of him. “Think about all the horrors humans have been responsible for in the last two millennia: war, pollution, extinctions—hell, TV alone!” He started counting on his fingers. “ _American Idol, Teletubbies, Jersey Shore,_  fifteen seasons of  _ER_ , pretty much everything the CW has ever done…”  
  
Jesus flinched a little when  _Jersey Shore_  came up.   
  
“Okay, I get it,” Missouri said, pushing away her plate with a sour expression. “And I still have no idea what to do with it. I don’t know about you, but I’m way out of my league here.”  
  
Chuck nodded, watching Jesus finish off his project. The guy set the bottle of maple syrup down on the table gently, placing his pinky down first to cushion its landing. Picking up a fork, he proceeded to saw at the waffle, cutting it into jagged-edged chunks and smearing his carefully portioned syrup all over the plate.  
  
“Yeah,” Chuck agreed. “But he came to us. We were flying under the radar, so he must’ve snuck in when Castiel—” His throat choked. When Castiel found out what a selfish liar I am and left to save Dean from Heaven, he wanted to say, but the words were trapped somewhere behind his sternum.   
  
Missouri patted his hand. She’d been there - he didn’t have to say, even though it was totally, utterly his fault. “You’re saying he snuck in while our wards were down for a reason.”  
  
“Like he wants us to help him do something.”  
  
Jesus glanced over his shoulder at Missouri as he chewed his breakfast, and she passed him a weary smile. “Or maybe,” she said, “he was just looking for sanctuary.”   
  
Sanctuary with waffles. Chuck could get behind that.   
  
***   
  
 _“I’m not going to have sex with you in Heaven’s green room, Dean.”  
  
Dean laughed as he downed one of the strawberry daiquiris Anna had left on the table. “Oh, c’mon, why not? You come in here just gunning to make out with me, Anna left these lying here all conspicuously—” He rattled a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs that their captor had left hanging off one of the bottles “—and besides, it’s something we could both cross off our list of things to do before we die.”  
  
Castiel frowned. “I don’t have that sort of list. And I’m fairly certain that was her idea of a joke.”  
  
“Angel humor,” Dean sniffed, tossing the handcuffs down on the table. “It’s gotten more advanced since Uriel.”  
  
“It’s become more human,” Castiel said, “because Anna was human. That’s her weak spot. She remembers what it was like to be human. The has to be something we can exploit in that - some measure of doubt—”  
  
“No can do, Big Bird. I already had that conversation with her.”  
  
“And?”  
  
The smirk on Dean’s face disappeared, his features going stern. “And forget it. Your friends in the brainwashing department did a number on her. She thinks her doubt is reinforcing her allegiance to Sauron, not breaking it. What doesn’t kill you—”  
  
“My ‘friends’?” Castiel said, taking a step back. His elbow hit the harp in the corner, and a dull musical resonance rebounded off the sculpted walls. “I have no friends in Heaven, Dean. You know that.”  
  
“Well, you sure didn’t waste any time getting yourself back here, given the chance!” Dean shot back.  
  
“To help you!”  
  
“Help me?” Dean slammed the daiquiri bottle down on the table so hard it made Castiel jump. “By getting yourself trapped in here with me so I can worry about the both of us? In what universe is that helping?”  
  
“I needed to see you!” Castiel shouted, surprising himself with the volume of his voice. Evidently it surprised Dean, too, because the man leaned back against the table, his eyes wide. “I needed—” Castiel’s shoulders dropped. “I needed to know that you were all right, and I needed closeness to you to heal myself. I couldn’t just stand by and wait for the rest of the Scoobies to figure out a way to get you out of here. I know it’s not logical, but I—I’m not logical, Dean. I’m not an angel. I’m just a man, and I’m in love, no less - which, I can tell you from millennia spent watching your species, strips what logic humans do have even further.”  
  
Dean swallowed, staring for a second. Finally, his mouth hinged open. “‘Scoobies’?”  
  
Castiel slouched against the wall, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s a Buffy reference. If we survive this, I’m inviting you over to Chuck’s to watch the series.” His body sunk against the wall, landing with a dull thud against the floor, and he curled over his knees, face in hands.  
  
Dean ambled over and sat down beside him, drawing one arm around him. “Hey,” he said, kissing the side of Castiel’s head, “I, uh…I say stupid crap sometimes when I’m pissed, but I appreciate it. Coming after me, I mean. It’s nice to have company that doesn’t want to force feed me burgers until Judgement Day, y’know?”  
  
Castiel nodded, curling in toward Dean. “You’re forgiven.”  
  
“So, uh.” Dean cleared his throat. “You’re in love, huh? Y’know, guys don’t really go around saying things like that to each other.”  
  
“Shut up,” Castiel said, and turned to kiss him. _  
  
Chuck smiled a little. At least Castiel could be happy, this way. Sort of. Like he’d said, at least he was trying to be happy.   
  
The thought made Chuck curl in on himself, like one of those turtles on Animal Planet trying to save themselves from predators. The corner of Missouri’s psychic readings parlor he’d staked out for writing space seemed cold and far away from everything. That might be his imagination playing tricks on him. Or it might be the fact that it was a quiet, sound-insulated room far away from the hustle of the house, and Jesus had called nonverbal dibs on the den with all the blankets and pillows.   
  
Chuck took a deep breath and was about to put his fingers back to the keyboard of the ancient laptop when he heard a noise outside. Several noises, actually. Car engines.  
  
He’d written a bit of this scene from the other side. Crap. Sam and his eco-friendly demon army had arrived. And Missouri had made it extra clear to Chuck that he was the one who got to break the news of Dean’s current predicament to the most gigantic Winchester and his trunk full of guns.   
  
Hooray.   
  
Chuck closed the laptop and placed it carefully under Missouri’s wingback chair where he could pick it up later - if he wasn’t in itty bitty pieces fertilizing the front lawn. Gathering up his pathetic supply of courage, he got up and went to the front door, where Missouri was already waiting to greet the new guests.   
  
“Powerful lot,” she said when he peered out the window at the parking cars. “Not as powerful as the waves of energy I got off you and Castiel, and nowhere near the level of that boy in your pillow fort, but powerful. Especially Sam. He doesn’t know how much more weight he’s carrying than the army he’s made himself.”  
  
“Jesus is the most powerful person here?” Chuck said, his eyebrows raising. “But he…I mean…look at him.”  
  
“He’s meant to take on the devil, Chuck.” She gave him a stern look, like he shouldn’t be asking rude questions. “Just because you don’t feel up to the task doesn’t mean you don’t have the power in you, Chuck. You oughtta know that.”  
  
Chuck swallowed a lump of guilt in his throat. “Yeah, okay. So, what are we gonna do with all these demons?”  
  
Missouri shot him a smirk and turned, starting back toward the kitchen. “I’ll leave that to you, Mr. I Make Decisions For Everybody Else.”  
  
“But—” Chuck started.  
  
“Just don’t let them trample my begonias.”  
  
Dammit. She was gone, and he was left alone in the foyer on the other side of the door from just about the scariest thing he’d seen roll into town since Dickface had shown up with a sword. Chuck’s stomach pinched at the thought. He took a couple of deep breaths, muttered a few words of encouragement to himself, gripped the doorknob, and stepped outside to greet the new guests. Army of guests. Demon army of guests, who would probably be pissed when they found out the other half of the plan had gone awry and—  
  
Positivity! This was a time for positivity! Chuck plastered on the biggest smile he could muster, straightened his back, and strode out to the Impala on the curb to greet Sam.   
  
Crowley was the first one out of the car, straightening his blazer and cricking his neck loudly. Chuck knew from his visions that he and Sam had been sharing the Impala since the Norske Nook, taking turns exposing each other to new music - Sam via the iPod connector he’d kept in his duffel just in case of road trips without Dean, and Crowley via demonic musical radio summoning. They’d bonded over the Magnetic Fields. Nerds.  
  
“Incoming,” Crowley muttered, just as Sam got out of the driver’s side. “Did you call ahead for more demons? He’s not wearing his face right.”   
  
“H-hey, Sam,” Chuck said, trying to ignore the demon.  
  
“Hey, Chuck,” Sam said, first smiling and then giving him a curious look. “Are you okay? You look like you’re passing a kidney stone or something.”  
  
“No, uh, no kidney stones,” Chuck said, scratching the back of his head. He dropped the smile, because clearly it wasn’t working. “Now that you’re here, I sorta need to talk to you about something.”  
  
“Can it wait?” Sam said, starting up the front walk. “I should meet with Dean and get a head count on who we’ve got here. Maybe put up some stronger sigils, brief everyone on how to get along—”  
  
“Yeah, about that.” Chuck took a deep breath. And…another deep breath. And another. Sam lowered his head like a curious giraffe, and Chuck blew out his breath, deciding to man up and just tell him.   
  
He took one more deep breath just in case, and started.  
  
A few minutes later, Chuck raced into the house on the heels of a fuming, stomping Sam. “Shoes!” he cried, tripping out of his own slippers at the foyer mat. “Shoes at the door!”  
  
Sam either didn’t hear him or didn’t care about keeping the rugs in like-new condition. “Missouri!” he bellowed.   
  
“Yes?” she called, peeking her head placidly out the kitchen door. “Oh, Sam, you’re just in time for muffins.”  
  
Sam stopped just inside the kitchen, his chest heaving even though the walk had just been across the house. Being that angry must take a lot of air. Chuck held his arms tight around his stomach and pressed himself into the groove of the door frame, trying to shrink in size.   
  
“Did you know about Dean?” Sam said.   
  
“Him being Heaven’s bitch, you mean?” Missouri answered, cocking an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, I knew.”  
  
Sam ran both hands back through his hair. “And you didn’t call me? And you let this—this little rat keep sleeping in your guest room? Christ, Missouri!”  
  
“Now hold on just a minute,” Missouri said, slapping her pot holders down on the counter. “I don’t care what you say about Chuck, but don’t you dare take that accusatory tone with me. I am not obligated to keep you abreast of the goings-on in my house. In case you forgot, you left me out of your own story for almost four years. And then you come barging back in here, dumping prophets and fallen angels in my house to eat out of my pantry, and demand information from  _me_ , when you didn’t even leave me with a phone number other than your brother’s? I don’t think so, Sam.”  
  
Sam’s brow rose, and he leaned back, his hand unclenching. “I—I’m sorry.”  
  
“You should be,” Missouri said with a huff, and pointed a thumb at the cooling rack over the stove. “Muffin?”  
  
Sam exhaled, deflating a few sizes. “Yes, ma’am,” he said quietly, leaning against the door frame opposite Chuck. As Missouri went to grab him a steaming hot muffin, he shot Chuck a—well, not a glare exactly - it was too sad for that. It was the sort of look Castiel had given him after Chuck had told him the secret he’d been keeping. Chuck’s Adam’s apple bobbed hard in his throat. Sam looked away. “Have you seen him…coming back?”  
  
Chuck shook his head several times before working up the voice to say, “No.” Shrugging, he added a hopeful “Not yet, anyway.”  
  
Sam nodded. “I know what Dean would say if he were here.”  
  
“‘Hell yeah, muffins’?” Chuck guessed.   
  
“He’d say destiny’s a sham and we’re just making it up as we go, so we’ve gotta find our own way to get him and Cas out of Heaven’s hands. Except he’d probably throw in a ‘friggin’ and maybe a ‘Christ.’”  
  
“Yeah,” Chuck said, “uh, about that.”  
  
A few minutes later, Sam and Chuck stood together at the doorway to the den, peering between the cushions and sheets at Jesus, who was making origami balloons out of pages from the remaining pages of Chuck’s earlier visions.  
  
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sam said.   
  
“He makes cranes too, sometimes, but he seems to really like the balloons,” Chuck said, stuffing both hands into the pockets of his hoodie. Watching Jesus in the fort made something inside him sink, and it had nothing to do with the messiah. That fort used to be his happy little kingdom, before Castiel had gone.   
  
He was always building happy little kingdoms, in one form or another. The fort. His happy-verse. In the years before Lucifer’s rise, there’d been the romance novels he’d written, and the fan fiction, and a dozen comic and TV scripts that never saw the light of an editor’s desk because they were just wish fulfillment, really. If he went all the way back, there was that short story about the boy and his dinosaur. He’d never been able to handle the hard, meaningful stories - not in the long run. Not in his own words.  
  
Chuck knew he was a hack. The fact had never bothered him until recently.   
  
“You can punch me if you want,” he said, cringing as the words came out.   
  
“What?” Sam said.   
  
“It’s my fault you’re here now just learning about all this crap. I could’ve picked up the phone, and instead I hid my vision notes like a chicken and hoped it’d all pass.”   
  
“I’m not gonna punch you, Chuck.” Sam sighed. “Stupid ass stunts or not, you’re on our side, man - one of the good guys.”   
  
Chuck pulled away from the doorway, eyes on the hardwood floor. “I hate to disagree with you and your enormous hands, Sam, but you’re wrong there - I’m true neutral at best. That self-sacrifice thing with Zachariah’s sword? That was a last-ditch effort to prove to myself I could be something more than a coward. And y’know what it taught me?” When Sam didn’t ask, he raised his eyes to meet the man’s face. “I  _am_  a coward. I’m just another asshole with delusions of heroism.”  
  
“That’s not true,” Sam said, looking almost like he meant it.   
  
“It is.” Chuck shrugged, smiling a little. “I’m nobody. I’m the Zeppo. Now, c’mon, I cleared a space in the fridge for that slice of pie you got for Dean. We can save it for him for when you heroic types get him and Castiel back.”  
  
Sam followed him back to the kitchen without argument. “You do know I don’t get that ‘Zeppo’ reference.”  
  
“That’s because you and your brother are Whedonless heathens,” Chuck said, and bit his tongue to keep from saying anything more. Secretly, he hoped for the post-apocalypse  _Buffy_  marathon that Castiel promised Dean in the green room - even if he knew from writing them that the Winchester brothers were popcorn hogs who talked during movies.  
  
A few minutes later, Dean’s slice of pie was resting in a plastic container in the middle rack of the fridge, between a tupperware container of homemade soup and a can of Reddi Whip. Chuck hoped it wouldn’t be there for long. He closed the fridge door.   
  
***  
  
Jesus discovered Minesweeper at the same time Chuck rediscovered drinking - on that first night of demon army occupation. An attentive demon had noticed on the drive in that the liquor store two blocks away was having a blowout sale, and loaded up with anti-angel charms and cloaking sigils, a group of them went out for provisions. Chuck went with them, eager to get out of the house, and spent the last of his cash on two bottles of dirt-cheap whiskey, each about the size of his thigh. The demon Crowley gave him a foul look when he started on one of the bottles right there in the backseat of the hatchback they’d driven there.   
  
“Pig’s swill,” Crowley muttered. “No taste whatsoever.”  
  
“Plenty of taste,” Chuck shot back. “Tastes like fire and getting drunk.”  
  
Crowley just rolled his eyes. That seemed to be his response to a good deal of the goings-on around the Moseley household.   
  
None of the demons seemed to have a problem with open liquor bottles in the car.   
  
When they got back to the house, Chuck walked in on Jesus playing Minesweeper on his laptop in the parlor. The guy was hunched over the screen, eyes wide and intent, one tightly coiled finger poised over the trackpad like he was attempting to disarm a real, live bomb. On the plus side, he was almost smiling, which was new.  
  
“Oh, man,” Chuck muttered. “Minesweeper got you, huh?”  
  
Jesus’s head jerked up, and he scrambled to his feet, offering the laptop back to Chuck.  
  
Chuck swayed for a moment, his throat still hot from the last swig of whiskey, and said, “Nah, you play as long as you want. Enjoy yourself.”  
  
At least if Jesus was busy with his laptop, Chuck had a good excuse not to peek into Heaven’s green room for a while. Nobody was going to try to take a computer away from the son of God.   
  
“Y’know, there’s an Advanced level to that,” he said, leaning over Jesus’s shoulder as the guy settled back into the wingback chair.   
  
That suggestion heralded the beginning of the end. Or, well, the beginning of another end - there were so many endings going on that Chuck couldn’t keep track of them all. All evening he thought about it, drumming up a list in his mind. The end of the world. The end of Missouri’s back flower bed as the demon army planted their tents all around the back yard. The end of Missouri’s patience. The end of Jesus’s meager involvement in the household as the computer sucked him in. The end of Chuck’s friendship with—  
  
Chuck bowed his head, willing away nausea. No. So not thinking about that. He sank back into the ancient plaid couch, scratching his neck with the business end of a Bic. With Jesus in the den and Sam commandeering the guest bedroom upstairs, he’d been relegated to the back porch, which was crammed full of some summer’s garage sale leftovers and seemed to have more bugs than outside in spite of being screened in. He took a swig from the bottle he’d stuffed between the torn cushions.  
  
The next item on the list was the end of Chuck’s sobriety - thank god. That was progress, at least. Sobriety was…stupid. Everything on edge, always worried about what not to say, feeling the whole stupid weight of the whole stupid world on his shoulders. Screw sobriety. It never did anything for him. Way better to be drunk and not give a crap.   
  
When he was drunk, he didn’t care that there were demons camped out in the yard just feet from his couch, or that he had to use a notebook again if he wanted to write anything, or that his best friend was—  
  
Dammit. No. So not caring. Chuck was here, and Castiel was stuck in Heaven’s green room, and it didn’t matter one eensy weensy little bit to him.   
  
Except for the fact that it really sorta did matter. More than anything. It was the one thought that broke through the liquor haze. In the dark of the porch, with demons snoring just outside, Chuck put his pen to paper to check on him.   
  
Castiel and Dean were arguing again. And sleeping. And reluctantly eating burgers. Castiel tried to have a rational discussion with Anna, but nothing got through to her. Castiel and Dean argued again.  
  
Chuck missed the days of accidental porn. This was painful to write. Soon it would be the end of Dean’s slice of pie as it grew stale in the fridge. Even lemon meringue had a shelf life.   
  
He scratched out the pages he’d written and started over on a new page, shutting down his switchboard for the night.  
  
 _Anna changed her mind,_  he wrote.  _She let them go._  
  
Maybe he still had a knack for fiction after all. He circled the words, underlined them several times, and added some exclamation points for emphasis. The notebook made a satisfying  _thwap_  against the wall of boxes across the porch when he threw it.   
  
***  
  
Sam called a meeting of the good guys just after breakfast. Chuck suspected he chose the phrase “good guys” just to poke at him, but he didn’t say anything. He was only here to play the part of the prophet - right alongside the wise woman, the general, and the messiah. Chuck sat at the farthest end of the kitchen table from Sam, eyes on the wood grain, trying to imagine he was on a beach somewhere far, far away with Jean Gray from the  _X-Men_  comics. And maybe Uhura from  _Star Trek_  - original series or J.J. Abrams reboot, he wasn’t picky.   
  
“We’ve got three items on the agenda,” Sam announced, laying a clipboard down on the table.   
  
“Oh lord, he’s actually written an agenda,” Missouri muttered.   
  
“First,” Sam said, looking pointedly at her, “my army. Missouri, I know it’s a strain having them on your property, and I’ve already talked to the neighbors - the cover story’s that they’re staying here as part of a charity folk festival.”  
  
Chuck snorted. On the beach beside him, Jean Gray and Uhura giggled girlishly while applying sunscreen to each other.   
  
“I’ve told my army that they’re to obey your rules at all times otherwise they answer to me, so Missouri, if you want to institute some special demon-related rules, now’s the time to do it.”  
  
“I’ll give you a list,” Missouri said, crossing her arms.   
  
“Okay,” Sam said, clearing his throat. “Second, the elephant in the room: Lucifer.”  
  
Crap. Oh, c’mon, did he have to talk about this? Chuck dropped his head into his arms and imagined Jean Grey and Uhura rubbing sunscreen on his back.  
  
“I know we don’t have all our pieces on the board yet, but we need to start developing a strategy. Once we know where Lucifer is, my army can fight through his defenses to get us face to face. The question is: What then?”  
  
Chuck whistled the “Game Over” theme from Super Mario Brothers. He must’ve underestimated Sam’s geekiness, though, because he could’ve sworn he caught the guy glaring at him.   
  
“Well, what are our best weapons?” Missouri prompted.  
  
“My powers,” Sam said, nodding. “What foreknowledge we can get from Chuck’s visions. I’ve read about weapons that could kill angels - bet we could track down one of those. And, uh, well…him.”   
  
Everyone at the table looked at Jesus, who was engrossed in a game of Minesweeper on the laptop.  
  
“Um, excuse me?” Sam tried. “Mr. Christ?”  
  
Jesus gave him a passing confused look and returned to his game.  
  
“I don’t think he goes by ‘Mr. Christ,’” Missouri said.   
  
“Maybe he goes by ‘The Dude,’” Chuck suggested, cracking a smile. “Or, y’know, ‘His Dudeness,’ or ‘Duder,’ or ‘El Duderino,’ if you’re not into that whole brevity thing.”   
  
Missouri snickered. Jesus made a huff of a sound sort of like a laugh.   
  
Sam threw his arms up in the air. “Okay, has everyone in the world but me seen  _The Big Lebowski_?”  
  
“Probably,” Chuck said, shrugging.  
  
“Just ‘Jesus’ works,” Missouri said.  
  
“Fine.” Sam put his polite voice back on. “Jesus?”  
  
The guy clicked one more box on the screen, clearing the minefield, and looked up.   
  
“Um,” Sam started. “I was wondering, seeing as you have sort of a history and prophesied destiny involving things like this and family connections and everything…would you help us bring down the devil?”  
  
Jesus’s eyes went wide. His hands shook, rattling the laptop against the table. Shaking his head stiffly, he hugged the laptop to his chest, squeaked his chair back, and slouched out of the room.   
  
“Please?” Sam tried.  
  
The door to the den latched closed.  
  
“I don’t think he wants to be anybody’s trump card,” Chuck said. “Can’t really blame him.”  
  
“It took a lot of coaxing to get him out of that den,” Missouri said with a sigh. “Poor boy.”   
  
Sam scribbled something on his agenda, swearing under his breath. “Okay. I guess we’ll deal with that later. Chuck?”  
  
Chuck raised his head suspiciously. “What? Me? What about me?”  
  
“You’re the prophet. I need you working in full capacity, aiming your inner eye on Lucifer, his defenses, anything that stands in our way.”   
  
Jean Gray and Uhura disappeared in a fizzle of sand and lotion. Chuck sat up straight. “You want me to go seeking out Lucifer visions? Oh, hell no.”  
  
“Chuck,” Sam insisted, leaning toward him, “this isn’t negotiable. We need to know what he’s up to - that’s a fact.”  
  
“It’s my mind!” Jumping up, Chuck slammed his palms on the table. “You don’t get to tell me what is and isn’t ‘negotiable’ about my own head, Sam! The last time I did a mental search for Lucifer—” God, he’d kill to have that beach back right now, instead of the memory of Castiel’s painful death shrieking through his skull. “I wound up on the floor, unable to breathe. It’s all pain and panic around him, Sam, and I—I won’t do it. I won’t.” He started across the room toward the back porch. “Like Crowley told you in the pie shop - it’s a losing battle. Maybe we should all just party before the lights go out.”  
  
“Wait,” Sam said. “We still need to talk about Dean and Cas!”  
  
Chuck paused, his hand on the porch door. “Them I’ve been keeping an eye on.”  
  
“And?” Sam asked.  
  
“They’re screwed,” Chuck said, and slammed the door after himself.   
  
***  
  
Chuck stayed in the porch all day. It was quiet out there, aside from the occasional overheard demon conversation, and his whiskey was out there. He drank until he passed out, and then he woke up and doodled in the margins of his notebook, and then he drank some more. He drank until his head was ringing and he was sick of drinking. By then it was after sundown and the only light on the porch came from the glow of the flashlights in demons’ tents. Stretching out across the torn fabric of the couch with the whiskey bottle prodding his side, he stared up at the lights on the ceiling. They shifted and danced across the whitewashed boards, moving along with the voices outside.  
  
Chuck prodded the connection in his head, hoping it was more than a one-way line and once again doubting the switchboard imagery. It was so cold on the porch, and even with a house full of guests and a yard full of demons, it felt particularly lonely - an abandoned space, used only to store things that were destined to be thrown out. Pressing his hands against his face, Chuck took inventory of the million things that were wrong at this particular moment in time. The list threatened to crush him. He pressed his fingers into his eyelids, and red and green starburst patterns floated before his eyes.   
  
Of all the problems in this household, of all the people he should be concerned with, himself among them, all that Chuck could think of at this moment in the dark was Castiel. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling immensely stupid as he drew his hands together in front of his face, his palms flattened together.   
  
“Please,” he began in a whisper, because hey, if he was going to be bothering a higher being with a request for the first time in a decade, why not be up front about the pleading nature of the call? “Please, God, if you’re there…”   
  
Man, this felt stupid. It shouldn’t - he had the supposed son of God playing Minesweeper under the same roof - but it did. It felt like talking to the ceiling. “Take care of Castiel. Please. I just—I know I’ve been a crappy friend lately, and I don’t deserve to make requests on this particular front, but… He’s my friend. He’s the best friend I’ve got. And in the pile of heroes I’ve sort of accidentally tripped over, he’s honestly one of the purest of heart. Which is one of those phrases you never think you’re gonna say, but it really fits here.”   
  
Chuck pressed his thumbs against his chin, so his breath warmed his hands. “Anyway, if you care about that kind of stuff, protect him. Please.” Then, because he couldn’t remember how to end a prayer, he whispered, “Over and out,” and dropped his hands to his chest with a sigh.  
  
What came next surprised Chuck: a mental tingling, followed by a sudden, unbidden vision writing itself on a blank wall in his imagination.   
  
 _Castiel sat in a corner with his head in his hands. Dean lay across the room on his side, snoring lightly, Castiel’s jacket draped across his shoulders. The green room smelled like ozone and the evening’s serving of burgers - if you could call it an evening. Nothing changed in this place - not time, not the menu, and most maddeningly, not the predicament. Drawing his hands through his hair, Castiel swore under his breath. He closed his eyes, pulled his body into a tight knot, and said into the space by his elbows, “I’m sorry.”_  
  
Chuck’s throat tightened. He wished he was there to help.  
  
 _“I’m sorry for what I said,” Castiel told the air. “I was angry and desperate and not used to being either of those things, and I aimed to hurt you. Giving your life to save mine—I know you did that for me, and I still think it makes you a hero, whether you believe it or not. Chuck, if you see this...”_  
  
Castiel’s voice petered out, and so did the vision. Chuck lay staring at the ceiling for a long time afterward, thinking about switchboards and the lights on the ceiling and how very much he missed his friend.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fat donut pie is a real delicacy, invented by my college roommates. If you ever find yourself at Super America at 2am in need of a sugar rush, the recipe Chuck gives in this chapter will tell you what you need to do.

Chuck woke in the middle of the night with his neck twisted at an odd angle against the arm of the threadbare couch and a spider crawling across his arm. He bit back a decidedly unmanly shriek and flailed, sending the bug flying across the porch. Outside the screened windows, he heard one of the demons in the tents chuckle, and he hoped it wasn’t at his expense. It was official: he hated this arrangement. Rude neighbors, a bed that made his back feel like it belonged to an octogenarian, a faint smell of mildew permeating his clothes after spending a day and night there, and spiders. Spiders on  _him!_  This place was like the worst motel ever - and he was pretty sure he could make that claim stick, having written several hundred awful motels.  
  
His legs creaked as he stood up, and his head knocked into an empty birdcage that still had used newspaper hanging out of its door. He swore, holding his head. The demons in the yard laughed again, and this time he was pretty sure he was the butt of the joke. Screw this place - he was going inside.  
  
There was a light in the kitchen. Chuck shielded his eyes for a second before they focused, and then he saw the source: the open fridge door, and in front of it, Jesus. The guy practically had his forehead against the freezer door, his shoulders hunched protectively over something in his hands.   
  
“What’re you—” Chuck started, and Jesus started like a scared rabbit.   
  
In his hands was a fork and the plastic container containing Dean’s slice of pie.   
  
“Hey,” Chuck said, dropping his arms to his sides, “that’s for Dean!”  
  
Jesus swallowed a mouthful of pie with a guilty expression, licked whipped cream off his lips, and looked longingly down at the remaining mess of a slice.   
  
There was such sorrow in his eyes that Chuck paused. He drew closer, resting his hands on the outside of the door. “Have you—have you had pie before?”  
  
Jesus blinked hard at the slice, then raised his eyes slowly to Chuck’s. The answer was written plain on his face, no need for a psychic to interpret.   
  
“Oh my god,” Chuck said, and winced. “I mean—sorry. You know what I mean. Wow. Two thousand years and change, and you’ve never—? Wow.”  
  
That earnest expression changed to one of annoyance. Jesus closed the pie container with a click.   
  
“No, no, man - go for it.” Chuck shook his head. “Dean would want you to have it. Really. He’s all for pie-based education.”  
  
And besides, Dean probably wasn’t coming back. But Chuck didn’t say that - like so many words he found himself thinking lately, those ones didn’t want to come out.   
  
Jesus hesitated, then unclicked the corners on the pie container and dug the fork in. When he drew the forkful of pie into his mouth, his eyes closed and his shoulders relaxed. A small, appreciative sound escaped through his nose. Chuck found his own mouth watering. Dude was really enjoying that damn pie.   
  
Chuck leaned over the fridge door. “Hey, uh, if you haven’t had a chance to try pie in the last two millennia, I bet there’s a lot of other stuff you never got to try. What about…Cheetos?”  
  
Jesus polished off the crust of the pie and licked whipped cream off his fingertips, giving Chuck a curious look.   
  
“Pop Rocks?” Chuck tried, and was met with the same perplexed head tilt. The guy reminded him of Castiel a little bit in that - and he was willing to bet that, just like Castiel, Jesus had never been party to the glory of KFC, or milkshakes, or Ace of Base, or—god, there was one wonderful thing he hadn’t even had the chance to introduce Castiel to. “I bet you’ve never had fat donut pie,” he said, nodding to the messiah.  
  
Jesus tilted his head again, and Chuck knew he had to educate him. “All right,” he said, grabbing one of Missouri’s spare protection charms off the kitchen counter and tossing it to Jesus. “Put this on. We’re going to the Super America.”   
  
Jesus followed behind him, and in minutes they were walking up the block toward the gas station. The Crocs that Jesus had borrowed from Missouri’s front closet made a faint slapping noise against the sidewalk with every step, and he seemed utterly fascinated with it. Chuck watched him, wondering what his world had been like. Quieter, probably. With fewer plastics.   
  
The florescent lights in the Super America sign had been half burned out all week, but the moment Jesus and Chuck walked through the door, the broken bulbs glowed like midday sun. The clerk at the counter looked up from her copy of _US Weekly_  like she’d just been shaken awake.   
  
“Nice trick,” Chuck said.   
  
Jesus shrugged - no big deal.   
  
“Okay,” Chuck said, leading him to the rack of slightly stale baked goods at the back of the store. “Ingredient one: donuts.” He grabbed a couple at random, and Jesus followed suit. “Ingredient two,” he said, crossing to the display of Hostess fruit pies, “is these. Now, it’s not really a recipe, per se - more of a loose accumulation of ingredients stuffed into the microwave together and eaten at the same time, preferably with one of those 40oz slushy things on the side. But trust me on this - it’s the sweetest human existence gets. My college buddies came up with it at 4am during finals week.”  
  
Chuck paid for their snacks, including a couple of slushies - cherry, because the blue raspberry just reminded him of Castiel and gangsta rap. The industrial grade microwave next to the coffeemaker whirred and clunked inside as it heated their purchases, and Jesus peered through the glass at the filling bubbling out of his fruit pie. Yep, using a microwave was definitely on the list of missing life experiences.   
  
They sat down on the curb outside to eat. It was past 2am, at least, and the gas station was right across the street from an elementary school baseball diamond, so everything stretching in front of them was completely still. Street lamps flickered across the block, glowing a little brighter in Jesus’s presence. Following Chuck’s example, the guy took a bite of his donut, then a gooey mouthful of Hostess fruit pie. He didn’t need Chuck’s instruction to wave a hand at the hot food in his mouth and take a quick gulp of slushy. Chuck smiled a little. It was nice to know some things about modern life were instinct.   
  
“Y’like it? Is it one of the best experiences you’ve had here?”  
  
Jesus nodded.   
  
“Well, good. I aim to please.” Chuck took a bite of fruit pie and wiped filling off his lip. “Actually, that’s not true. I pretty much aim to do the bare minimum and not get noticed. That’s kinda why I got so close to Cas, I think - he made me want to do more than that. When somebody makes you want to be a better person, you should keep ‘em around, y’know? Well. I’m sure  _you_  know. You’re charged with a lot of that.”  
  
Jesus just watched him, head resting on one hand and the slushy straw between his lips.   
  
Chuck sighed, weighing the snacks in his hand. “Guess I really screwed the pooch on the becoming a better person front. I tried, y’know - that’s gotta count for something. But I don’t know what I’ll do if we never get Castiel out of that green room. I had this vision, back when we first got here. Lucifer killing him. God, it hurt. I don’t think anything in my life has ever hurt that bad.” He paused to take a bite of donut, letting the sugary grit of the dessert wash over his tongue. “Well. Maybe gallstones. Those really sucked.”  
  
Jesus was staring across the street at that baseball diamond with a look of polite disinterest on his face.   
  
Okay, yeah, TMI. Chuck slouched. “What about you?”  
  
Jesus glanced back at him, eyebrows raised and his lips a tight line.  
  
“I mean, I can guess at the most painful part of your life. But what about the rest of it - how’s it compare to this?”  
  
A pause. The man raised one hand and pinched his finger and thumb slowly toward each other. Then he furrowed his brow, shook his head, and spread his hands apart. Smaller - and at the same time, bigger.  
  
Chuck snickered. “Just wait till you see the internet.”   
  
***  
  
It was kind of nice, having a friend who didn’t talk. Everybody else in the household, from Sam to the least intimidating demon, seemed to want something from Chuck, and they vocalized it any time he was in the same room with them. Help with this plan. Tell us what you saw. Give us your autograph, prophet. Where did you get that fruit pie? Any time he walked out into the house, he felt like he was being pulled in three different directions, none of them ones he was keen on following. But if he stayed behind the closed door of the den with Jesus, nobody bothered him. Missouri was the only one who would even approach the door - the demons got skittish with the messiah around, and Sam was weirdly flustered around him after the whole “Mr. Christ” thing, so only one set of knuckles ever rapped at that door, and they were usually followed by a plate of cookies.   
  
Chuck did what any good liaison to modern culture would do in his place: he dug a pile of DVDs out of Missouri’s collection and used the laptop and an external DVD drive to introduce Jesus to the classics.  _Star Wars_  came first, because it was first chronologically. Jesus sat through the whole trilogy with his head tipped slightly to one side in a way that reminded Chuck of Castiel. He didn’t make a sound except when Han Solo said something that entertained him, and then he let out a huff and smiled.   
  
The rest of Missouri’s DVD stack was slightly more sparse on classic scifi titles, but it was still pretty geek-friendly. Chuck pulled out  _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze,_   _The Breakfast Club_ , and a surprisingly battered copy of  _Clerks._  Outside the den, feet stomped and voices battled. Chuck hunched in the corner of the couch with his hands at his neck, hoping they didn’t need anything from him. The door only opened once. It was Missouri, looking frazzled.  
  
“‘Scuse me, boys, but have either of you heard of a sword with the ability to kill anything?”  
  
“The Ultima Weapon?” Chuck tried.   
  
Missouri pursed her lips. “This demon Crowley swears there’s an angel-killing sword in circulation on the supernatural black market - might help us get your friends out of Heaven’s hands, and then some. We need to know if it’s legit.” She pulled out an inkjet photo. “The seller sent us this picture. Look familiar?”  
  
Chuck leaned over to get a better look, and his insides went icy. The weapon on the screen was the same one that Dickhead had swung straight through him. He hadn’t had a lot of time to look at it in the field, but he recognized the gold edge on the blade. Come to think of it, he’d never asked what happened to the sword - in the chaos that followed his death, it made sense that the sword would’ve been forgotten and picked up by someone scrying for magical objects to sell. And of course Dickhead would’ve brought his fanciest, most everything-killingest weapon onto the battlefield. The dude was all about overkill.   
  
Curling back in on himself, Chuck swallowed and nodded. “Yeah, uh, that’s—that’s a little more than familiar. It belonged to Zachariah.”  
  
“Yeah? You have a vision of that?”  
  
“No. It sort of…uh…” Chuck hugged his stomach hard, trying not to remember the sensation of that blade slicing through him.  
  
Missouri frowned deeply. “Oh. My condolences. Would you boys like something to eat?”  
  
Chuck looked to Jesus, who was paying rapt attention to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles eating pizza. “Yeah,” he said. “Food might be good.”   
  
Missouri left. Chuck rested his head in his hands. The sword that had killed him was going to be in the house. Oh, goodie. That wasn’t a jarring reminder of his own mortality at all.   
  
He tried to keep his cool through the rest of the movie, but it wasn’t happening. The beginning of  _Clerks_  didn’t hold his interest, either. He ate what Missouri brought into the room, averted his eyes when Jesus gave him curious looks for tapping his fingers, and picked at the loose threads on the sleeve of his hoodie until he’d worn a small bare patch into it. Giving in, he grabbed a day planner from the end table beside the couch and started writing.   
  
 _Castiel leaned against the table, the marble surface pressing hard against his elbows. Dean was in the opposite corner, his face covered by his jacket, snoring softly. They’d started sleeping in shifts not long ago - a day, maybe, based on how many times Castiel’s stomach had required a meal - and it was his turn to stay awake. Dean didn’t want Anna “screwing with his crap” while he was asleep. Castiel knew better than to expect petty theft or wardrobe sabotage from the angels, but he didn’t want to say so and provoke another argument.  
  
“Anna,” he whispered toward the painting of Lazarus on the wall. “Can you hear me? I’d like to speak with you.”  
  
Air rustled to his left. “Trying to convince me to let you go again?”   
  
“No,” Castiel said, bowing his head toward the table. “I just want to…talk.”  
  
A shadow fell over the table, followed by a pair of thin arms and a cascade of red hair. Anna smiled slightly, her eyes dark. “What about?”  
  
“I want to know why.” He raised his head. “Why, after all the host of Heaven has done to you, do you stay with them? I’ve been in your place. I’ve felt their hands on my soul, rearranging and forcing the message into me. ‘Bible camp,’ as Dean calls it, was an unpleasant experience. You might call it torture.”  
  
“The Host doesn’t torture—”  
  
“Like hell they don’t. They just don’t call it such because it’s for the greater good.” He closed his eyes, forcing back the flood of unwelcome memories the conversation brought up. “But would you argue that it’s not a violation, and that their methods caused you no pain?”  
  
Anna ran her finger along the cap of a strawberry daiquiri bottle. “What’s your question, Cas?”  
  
“Why put your faith in a group that has intentionally harmed you and intends to harm others?”   
  
“Because they do it for the—”  
  
“Greater good, yeah,” Castiel finished with a sigh. “After a certain point, that answer stops being enough.”  
  
Anna leaned away from him, smirking. “At the point where you start feeling squishy hearts and candies love toward the man who’s arguing against it, you mean? That point?”  
  
Castiel’s jaw clenched. “That wasn’t—”  
  
“I was human once, Cas. I know a thing or two about romantic love. You had it bad for him since before I got my grace back, and everybody saw it except for you.” She wagged a finger at his nose. “So don’t try to tell me I’m going to have a change of heart like you did. My heart lies with Heaven, not with Dean Winchester’s rock-hard abs.”  
  
Castiel pushed her finger away. “At least the side I’ve chosen doesn’t punish those who think for themselves.”  
  
“Heaven only punishes for the sake of—”  
  
“You think that!” Castiel interrupted. Shoving himself away from the table, he looked her in the eyes. “When all the hands have been shown in this war and Heaven has mowed down innocents in the name of victory, you tell me again whether your side is truly so righteous.”  
  
Anna rolled her eyes. “And I suppose the humans on your side are infallible?”  
  
Castiel thought of—_  
  
Chuck swallowed, not writing out the rest of the sentence. He’d avoided writing himself into the story his visions told, and he wasn’t about to start with a line about how much he sucked. It was a selfish omission, maybe, but screw it - nobody had to see this, anyway.   
  
 _“No,” Castiel said, “they’re not. But they don’t pretend to be.”_  
  
Guilt surged up Chuck’s throat. He squeezed his eyes shut and tossed the day planner out of the fort. The DVD prattled on, Dante’s voice rising as his girlfriend walked out of the Quick Stop.   
  
“Try not to suck any dick on the way through the parking lot!”  
  
Someone laughed. Chuck was pretty sure that wasn’t part of the movie, so he opened his eyes. Jesus was doubled over on the sofa-bed next to him, both hands clapped to his mouth and laughter rolling out between them. Chuck stared. He’d never seen so much as one real laugh from the guy, and here he was crumpled on the bed, shoulders shaking, incapacitated with laughter. Tears eked out the sides of his eyes.   
  
“Really?” Chuck said, frowning. “You’ll lose it for Kevin Smith, but not even a chuckle for my Darth Vader impression earlier?”  
  
That only seemed to make Jesus laugh harder. He fell onto his side, his hands slipping off his mouth, and his voice rebounded off the walls of the den, deeper than Chuck had expected. Chuck smiled a little. Then he started to grin. Then, as if something was tugging it out of his heart, he started to laugh, too. In seconds, both of them were rolling on the bed, laughing and clutching their stomachs. Everything seemed too funny for words, from the movie to the pillow fort to the fact that Chuck was pouring out his visions of the future on a computer old enough to have a fourth grade education. It wasn’t just the laughter that wrenched itself out of him unbidden; it was the whole mood. Through the hilarity, Chuck dimly wondered if this was part of Jesus’s power, like the lights at the Super America - projecting his energy. Making things glow. That was pretty freaking hysterical.   
  
When the laughter subsided, Chuck’s ribs ached and he had tears streaming down his cheeks. “Dude, I so needed that,” he wheezed, and extended his fist. “Hit this.”  
  
Jesus squinted at Chuck’s hand, then carefully curled his fingers into a fist and copied the motion, bumping their knuckles together.  
  
“Yeah, you got it,” Chuck said.  
  
Jesus’s smile stretched into a full-on grin, creases forming at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth. It was the first time since he’d appeared that Chuck had seen him look genuinely, well,  _happy_. He wouldn’t have expected dumb movies of all things to make the son of God crack a smile. Maybe this guy had the right idea, Chuck thought - in the midst of Heaven and Hell crap, it was the inane human details that made life enjoyable.   
  
Or maybe the guy just thought dick jokes were really funny. Whichever the case, Chuck felt a weird kinship with him. Grinning back, he turned his end of the fist bump into exploding knucks. Jesus looked a little puzzled by that but copied the motion anyway.  
  
***  
  
Chuck envisioned himself and Jesus as the Jay and Silent Bob of the apocalypse - except, y’know, without the sex obsession and weed. While the main story of The Heroes Taking On Lucifer and Heaven went down in the foreground, Chuck and Jesus hung out nearby, not really paying attention. Sam left for half a day with Crowley and came back with a sword-shaped package and both of their shirts spattered in gore.   
  
While Crowley complained loudly about getting blood on his custom made crocodile skin loafers, Chuck and Jesus watched Animal Planet in the living room.   
  
While Sam polished Dickhead’s angel-killing sword, Chuck ranted about about the Galactic Empire’s disorganization and Jesus nodded knowingly.  
  
While Sam and Missouri discussed plans to make Anna release her captives under threat of angel sword shanking, Chuck introduced Jesus to Ace of Base and The Proclaimers. Every so often he started to sing along and felt his voice shrivel in his throat when he realized that Castiel wasn’t there to harmonize with him, but he wasn’t going to complain. Jesus clearly had a long way to go before he’d be up for talking, much less singing synth-pop, and complaining just seemed like it’d rub that in his face.   
  
They were in the middle of a Shark Week marathon when Jesus left for ten minutes and came back with a Super America bag full of Hostess fruit pies and donuts. He motioned Chuck toward the kitchen, and Chuck followed.   
  
“Dude, you went to SA by yourself?” He slapped Jesus on the back. “Good for you!”  
  
Sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of lore texts, Sam gave them a curious look. “I’m all for autonomy, but how did he pay for that?”  
  
Jesus popped his fat donut pie into the microwave and turned to Sam. Raising two fingers, he made his expression neutral and waved his hand in an arc.  
  
“You Obi-Wanned them?” Chuck said, laughing.   
  
Sam’s jaw dropped, and he shot Chuck a glare. “You taught Jesus to pull Jedi mind tricks on the Super America clerk?”  
  
“I didn’t teach him anything,” Chuck said, shrugging. “I just put the movie in front of him for him to absorb as part of his historical education. Anyway, he died for humanity’s sins - the least it can do for him in return is give him free fat donut pie.”  
  
“Fat donut pie?” Sam said blankly.  
  
“The sweetest snack known to modern man. You’d hate it.”  
  
Sam pushed back his chair and grabbed Chuck by the arm, walking him out of the kitchen and into the back porch. Chuck didn’t fight it because, hey, sasquatch-sized guy looming over him with a displeased expression.   
  
“What?” Chuck said as the door slammed closed behind them.  
  
“Don’t you think you’re setting sort of a bad example?” Sam whispered.   
  
“Don’t you think you should brush your teeth after having hummus for lunch?” Chuck said, clapping a hand over his nose.   
  
Sam put a hand over his own mouth. “It’s just that we need everyone on the same page if we’re going to win this war, and corrupting the Lamb - our best shot at a trump card - with snack food and shark attack documentaries isn’t exactly helping the cause.”  
  
“He doesn’t want to be part of your cause.”  
  
“But we need him,” Sam said through his fingers. “It’s that simple, Chuck - we hardly have a snowball’s chance without his help. Don’t you want to stop the apocalypse? Don’t you want to get Dean and Cas back?”  
  
That was a low blow. Chuck wrenched his arm away. “I know you’re the general here or whatever, Sam, but if he doesn’t want to follow your orders and let himself be a tool for world-saving shenanigans, that’s his own choice. And if he can’t tell you himself, I will: Leave him be.”  
  
“Why?” Sam said with a scoff. “Because that’s the choice  _you_  made?”   
  
Chuck came up with about fifteen really freaking snarky retorts, but only after Sam had already left the room.  
  
***  
  
Jesus seemed okay being out in the living room by himself, so while he was watching Shark Week, Chuck was on the couch on the porch, curled around the laptop. He’d seen everything Shark Week had to offer, he figured - every single show was “Look at this totally brutal shark attack!…but sharks are really more afraid of us than we are of them.”   
  
So Chuck wrote instead, to keep from thinking about what Sam had said. He tried venturing into his happy-verse, but that only resulted in redundant pie scenes and a weird alternate universe where Sam and Dean worked contentedly at the Quick Stop, so he got sick of it quickly. He stared at the Google Doc for a minute, biting his lip.  
  
Sam guilt was nearly as potent as Missouri guilt, and in the end, it forced his hand. Chuck went back to the document for his real visions, positioned his fingers on the keyboard, and flipped the mental switch labeled “Anna.”   
  
 _Anna missed the sensation of grass under her feet, so when she went to seek revelation, she flew to a hill outside Vancouver and kicked off her shoes. The higher-ups wouldn’t approve. In the end, though, their approval didn’t matter as much as God’s. She’d never spoken to God, but she liked to think that He would be pleased with her appreciation of his work. Taking a deep breath, she sat down with her bare soles against the grass and opened her mind to orders.  
  
The orders came swiftly, and with them her breath left.  
  
“But—” she started, and the voice projected in her mind hushed her. She listened and frowned. “We already have Dean Winchester captive. I can persuade him on my own, if you just—” The orders repeated, louder, and she stood up, yelling at the clearing, “Listen! I’m telling you it’s not necessary! I know grief weakens his will, but this isn’t—”  
  
The voice roared through her with the force of a small sun, all vengeance and ruffled feathers. Anna fell back into the grass, her head cracking against a tree root. She swore as the voice burned in her mind. After what seemed like eons, it paused.  
  
“Yes,” she said, blinking back tears. “I—I promised my allegiance to God and Heaven. I will not disappoint.”   
  
The voice lingered for a moment as if waiting for further argument, then left her.   
  
Anna lay still with grass prickling at the back of her neck and the smell of ozone sharp in her nose, staring up blankly at the sky. It wouldn’t motivate Dean, she thought. It wasn’t necessary. They didn’t understand. Or…they didn’t care. But no, the orders weren’t hers to be questioned.   
  
“I will not disappoint,” she told herself. “I will not disappoint.”  
  
If Heaven wanted her to do it, she would kill Castiel._  
  
Chuck hurled the laptop down on the couch. “CRAP!”  
  
Couldn’t Castiel go five minutes without some angel trying to kill him?  
  
***  
  
Chuck had written the words “Anna doubts” so many times they didn’t even seem like words anymore, and still, he wasn’t getting anything more off his switchboard connection.   
  
“Work,” he hissed at his hand as it scribbled hard dark lines in a stack of copy paper on the kitchen table. “Dammit, work!”  
  
“You can’t force these things, honey,” Missouri said, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. On his other side, Jesus attempted to repeat the gesture but changed his mind, shoving his hands into his lap and staring at the table instead.   
  
“Like hell I can’t,” Chuck said. He wrote Anna’s name, gave his connection a mental shove, and waited for the words to come. For about the thousandth time in the last five hours, nothing happened. “It gave me every freaking detail of every freaking moment I didn’t care about earlier, and now that I need it, it’s silent. What’s that about? How the frak is that fair?”  
  
“Anything?” Sam asked, poking his head into the kitchen.   
  
“No!” Chuck yelled between clenched teeth.   
  
Crowley strode into the room behind Sam, hands in his pockets, casual as anything. “We’ve got all the materials ready in the living room for the angel summoning ritual,” he said. “Just need the sigils taken down. In case you lot would like to, I dunno, save your friends.”   
  
“Can we take the messy rituals outside, please?” Missouri said.  
  
“Let’s get started, already!” Chuck cried.  
  
“Didn’t that ritual require rare holy oil?” Sam said, furrowing his massive brow.   
  
“I had a minion fetch it from my storehouse,” Crowley said, inspecting his nails. When the rest of the room only stared, he rolled his eyes. “I collect expensive oils. Anyone who wants me to elaborate on why, please continue gawking.”  
  
Everyone’s eyes shifted away from him in different directions.  
  
“Let’s set up the ritual,” Sam said, loudly clearing his throat.   
  
At Missouri’s request, they poured the circle of holy oil in the driveway. In the twilight, the oil glistened eerily against the blacktop. A neighbor walking her dog gave them a strange look and hurried on past.   
  
Chuck sat on the front steps, pressing paper against his knee and attempting to write while Sam reread the ritual directions and nervously clutched the sword. The words wouldn’t come. This was worse than trying to write the climax of his first pseudonymous romance novel.   
  
“Anyone who doesn’t want to be seen by the eyes of Heaven, put on your amulets now!” Sam announced. The group of demons who’d pulled up lawn chairs to watch from the yard pulled amulets around their necks. Chuck already had his on, as did Jesus, who was hovering just behind him.   
  
“Break it!” Crowley called back into the house. The air shifted as inside the house, Missouri swept a cleaning sponge across the protective sigil.  
  
“All right,” Sam said, taking a deep breath. He stepped into the circle, gripped the sword tight, and started to chant in Enochian. Or maybe it was ancient Sumerian. All those dead languages sounded the same to Chuck, and he wasn’t paying much attention to linguistics right now, anyway.   
  
Sam started the chant a second time, and—  
  
The street lamps all down the block blew, and the air crackled with electricity.   
  
“Was that it?” one of the demon spectators called. “That was easy.”  
  
“No,” Sam said, double-checking his printout of the ritual’s instructions. “I barely even st—”  
  
Light flashed, and Anna stood on the front lawn, her hair blowing wild around her. Beside her, one man’s collar clutched in each hand, were Dean and Castiel.   
  
Dean wrenched himself away from the angel, stumbled forward, and leaned over, bracing his hands on his knees. “Man, that travel package really oughtta come with complimentary Dramamine.”   
  
Chuck dropped his paper and pen and stood up, his mouth attempting to form words and failing.   
  
“Dean!” Sam said, running to him. Once he’d checked that his brother was okay, he turned to Anna. “Why—?”   
  
Anna released Castiel’s collar and passed him a smile that was almost shy. “After a certain point, ‘for the greater good’ isn’t enough of an answer. Wrath and cruelty aren’t what I signed on for.”   
  
Castiel roped an arm around her and laid his forehead against the side of hers for a moment, whispering something in her ear. Anna’s shoulders sagged in what looked like relief.   
  
Chuck took a step forward before he realized he was shaking from his knees to his fingertips. He wanted to say something, but his mouth wouldn’t form words. Why did the words always stop working when he needed them the most?  
  
Castiel grinned, letting go of Anna, and searched the crowd of demons and hunters before his eyes landed on Chuck on the front walk. The grin faltered. His legs moved.   
  
Castiel jogged across the grass, and Chuck seized enough control over his shaking limbs to meet him halfway. The impact knocked the wind right out of Chuck’s lungs. He wrapped his arms around Castiel, gripping fistfuls of his shirt, and Castiel’s arms enveloped him, lifting him in the air for a second. It probably looked like they were in a Hallmark Channel movie or a commercial for fabric softener or something, but Chuck didn’t care, because he had his friend back alive.   
  
“I’m sorry,” he said against Castiel’s shoulder, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry, Cas.”  
  
“I am, too,” Castiel said, letting him down but not letting go of him. “I never should have said—”  
  
“Forget it. I should’ve told you—”  
  
“It’s forgiven.”  
  
Dean patted his brother casually on the shoulder and gave the fallen angel and the prophet a sneer. “God, you two are gay.”   
  
Chuck and Castiel let go of each other to give Dean a slightly confused glare.   
  
“Just sayin’,” he shrugged.   
  
“Anyway,” Anna said loudly, “Dean’s deep-seated repression aside, we have some important stuff to discuss.”  
  
“Like who’s going to pay for all that wasted oil,” Crowley muttered from a lawn chair.   
  
“I want to help you,” Anna said to Sam. “And I know there are more angels willing to defect for the cause. I’ve heard others talk about the cruelty of their orders on Angel Radio, so they must be aware. Before coming here, I sent out a message—”  
  
The sky flashed white from horizon to horizon, illuminating everything so bright that Chuck had to shield his eyes. When the light disappeared, the first thing he saw was red.   
  
A trail of red dripping from Anna’s open mouth. Hands dug into either side of her head, which was twisted at a strange angle.   
  
The demons on the lawn gasped and scrambled out of sight, upturning chairs in their wake.   
  
“Angels,” said the blond man the hands belonged to. “Always rebelling. It’s such a fad these days - and like  _Farmville_ , it will get worse before it passes.” He smiled pleasantly at the group, dropping Anna. Her body crumpled to the pavement, looking miniscule at his feet. A shadow of wings burned into the blacktop on one side of her and the grass on the other.   
  
Castiel made a choked sound in his throat and lurched forward. Chuck grabbed his arm to hold him back.   
  
“Who are you?” Sam said, holding the sword out in front of himself.   
  
The blond man raised a hand and swept the sword out of Sam’s hand with a flick of his fingers. It clattered across the blacktop. “Sam, Sam,” he said. “I think you already know.”  
  
Sam’s chin wavered. “Lucifer,” he said, the syllables coming out stilted.  
  
“I came by to say hello,” said Lucifer. He smiled broadly, making sure to meet every person in sight in the eye - ending with Chuck. “Hello, boys and girls.”   
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

Chuck had never identified so strongly with Popples before in his entire life - not even that night in college he spent stoned out of his mind and popping one inside out and back again for like four hours. Right now, standing across Missouri’s lawn from Lucifer himself, with Castiel beside him and visions of Castiel’s excruciating death playing behind his eyes, he felt as if everything in his body that could retract had retracted out of sheer terror. Any moment, the strain of all of it would flip him inside out. But he was pretty sure he wouldn’t turn into a surprisingly fun 80’s plush ball if it happened - he’d just splatter prophet bits all over the yard. And that was so not the comforting mental image he needed right now.   
  
Stupid Popples.  
  
Lucifer’s gaze started back across the crowd, passing over Castiel, and Chuck felt his body move. Almost instinctively, he edged in front of his friend.   
  
“Aw,” Lucifer said, and tutted at him. “Such an adorable attempt at martyrdom. You must be the new prophet.”  
  
“What’s it to you?” Chuck shot back, his voice trying its best to sound like a badass action movie hero. Oh god, shut up, pleaded his brain.  
  
“Nothing, really,” Lucifer said, stepping over Anna’s body. “You’re irrelevant to me. Your friend, on the other hand…”  
  
“The last time someone tried to get to him,” Chuck sneered, “he had to go through me first, and an archangel smote the crap out of him,” Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP.   
  
Lucifer chuckled. “I’m not here to hurt him - or any of you.”  
  
Dean stepped forward, covering Castiel’s other side. For the first time, Chuck felt like they were on the same page. “What the hell are you here for, then?”  
  
“Checking out the competition,” Lucifer said. His hands landed in the pockets of his jeans, and a smirk lit his face ominously. Chuck had used the word ominously a lot in his writing career - far more than was really called for - but this may have been the first time in his life that he knew the true meaning of it. “And what competition you are. Each of you weak, selfish, greedy, addled with neuroses, human whether meant to be so or not.” He spared a sly look at Castiel. “Thank you, boys. I needed a laugh after so long trapped in that cage.”  
  
“Oh, great, gloating,” Dean said, crossing his arms. “Because hearing that from the bad guy never gets old.”  
  
“Dean,” Sam hissed, “don’t taunt the devil.”  
  
“Yeah, Dean,” Lucifer said, tilting his head. Chuck wondered if the head tilting was an angel thing. “You don’t want to burn bridges, do you?”  
  
“Bridges?” Dean scoffed.  
  
“We could be allies, Dean. Your brother, too. In fact—” Lucifer waved a hand diplomatically “—I might be willing to let your little ragtag team join forces with me, if you all agree to help me in my mission.”  
  
Dean stepped forward, his arms dropping to his sides in full-on hero stance. “And what could you possibly give us that would make us want to help you destroy the world?”  
  
Lucifer rolled his eyes toward the clouds and placed his fingers together like a bureaucrat contemplating a deal. “Okay, first off, I don’t want to destroy the world - I just need to do a little renovation. As for incentives, you would have the guaranteed safety of yourselves and your loved ones, a hand in restructuring the world to come, and first pick of the Raptured’s cars.” He raised his eyebrows at Dean, who glared. Lucifer shrugged, pulling something out of his shirt pocket. “Fine, you drive a hard bargain. Act now, and I’ll throw in a free keychain.”  
  
“Hey!” Dean said. “That’s  _my_  keychain! I earned that! Wait—”  
  
Lucifer dangled the object in the air. A small, bright orb swung from the keyring. Castiel’s fingers circled around Chuck’s arm, fingernails digging into his biceps through the hoodie fabric.   
  
“Is that—” Dean started.  
  
“One hundred percent pure angel grace, only one previous owner. Comes with a drastically lengthened lifespan and a Get Out of Pain Free card for the user.” Lucifer waggled the keychain, and Castiel’s grace made the shadows on the lawn dance. “This offer is only available for a limited time, kids. Going once—”  
  
Dean glanced back at Castiel, who was wide-eyed and shaking.  
  
“Going twice—”  
  
“Don’t even think about it,” Castiel whispered, giving the barest shake of his head.   
  
“No deal!” Dean shouted.  
  
Lucifer dropped Castiel’s grace back into his pocket. “Well, your loss. Don’t say I never gave you a chance.”  
  
“Oh, we’ve got a chance,” Dean said, and Chuck’s brain started yelling SHUT UP again, but this time not at himself. “You take a good hard look at these faces, buddy, because this is the team that’s taking you down for good.”  
  
Lucifer laughed and surveyed the group once more, but this time, his smile faltered midway through. “Is that—no.” He stepped forward, ducking his head to get a better view of someone. “You’re kidding me. I didn’t recognize you before, through all the chaos, but—you’re the Christ child, aren’t you?”  
  
Jesus stood on the front steps, one hand pressed against the side of the house like he was bracing to bolt.   
  
Lucifer wound around the group and up the first step. His face broke into a grin. “It  _is_  the little Lamb! Boys, do you mean to tell me that this is the source of your swagger? He’s not at all like the stories - no sword and fire. No righteous hand to strike me down. Just an empty, corrupt human shell. Utterly useless.” He leaned in close to look Jesus in the eye. “My regards to the godless filth that broke you. They just made my day.”   
  
Jesus swallowed hard, his fingertips turning white against the siding.   
  
Lucifer backed down the steps, patted his shirt pocket, and gave the group the sort of smug look Chuck had only ever previously seen on frat boys and superfans pointing out plot holes in his books. “Enjoy playing with your little green army men, boys. I’ll be hanging out nearby, laughing at your expense, if you change your mind.” He raised his fingers over his head. “In four days, I’m burning this world to its foundations.” With a snap, he was gone.  
  
The moment after Lucifer left, the yard went completely still. Nobody moved - nobody even breathed. Nobody except for Jesus, who took a stumbling turn up the front walk and sprinted inside, Crocs slapping against the pavement. As the front door slammed behind him, the demons crept out of hiding and about a dozen different conversations erupted outside, all of them at full volume.   
  
“We are so very deeply screwed!” Crowley informed them all.  
  
“Why didn’t I stab him?” Sam lamented, throwing his sword to the grass. “I should’ve—”  
  
Dean swore. “The devil touched my keychain!”  
  
“He got through the protective wards—”   
  
“Are the neighbors going to notice a dead angel on the—”  
  
“Four days? That’s not enough time to—”  
  
Everyone seemed to be flipping into panic mode. One demon shoved Crowley, Crowley charged at him, Sam crumpled on the grass with his head in his hands, and Dean just swore, loudly and with a better vocabulary than Chuck had amassed himself. Their voices rose so loud that Chuck’s hands curled up toward his ears. A body hit the garage door with a crack.  
  
Castiel grabbed Chuck by the elbows and said in his ear, “We need to follow Jesus.”  
  
“Why?” Chuck said, shaking his head. “The guy deserves a good storm-off after that. Hey, Cas, I’m sorry about your—”  
  
The remaining street lamps up the block flickered and burst, and the front porch light burned so bright it exploded, raining glass shards and dead bugs down onto the stoop. Chuck ducked and covered so fast he was a little impressed by his own reflexes.  
  
“What’s doing that?” he cried from under his arms.   
  
“Not what - who. Come on,” Castiel said, tugging Chuck up by the sleeve of his hoodie. Chuck protested, but honestly, he was halfway to a panic attack himself, and he welcomed the distraction. As they hurried inside, the door hung open behind them, spilling warring voices and the sound of a fist fight through the living room. The bulbs in Missouri’s vintage lamps made popping sounds and went dark as they passed.   
  
“Where would Jesus be?” Castiel said.  
  
“Den,” Chuck answered. “Probably hiding in the fort re-watching the reconciliation scene from  _Clerks._  He’s watched it five times in the last day. It seems to calm him.”  
  
Castiel yanked open the door to the den, and light poured out so bright that both of them had to shield their eyes.   
  
Jesus was not watching  _Clerks._  Jesus was storming around inside the small room, tearing pillows and blankets from the fort and hurling them at the walls. His teeth were clenched hard, his eyes streaming tears, and the two lamps in the room putting out more light than Chuck had seen since the archangel tore up his kitchen.   
  
“Christ,” Chuck muttered, too stunned to catch himself.  
  
Jesus grabbed a couch cushion from the load-bearing wall of the fort and wrenched it out of place with a choked sound behind his teeth. Lifting it over his head, he threw it at the wall clock, sending both toppling to the ground. Outside, the voices of the melee roared as if Sam’s entire demon army were trying to voice their opinions. Something clattered in the kitchen, and Chuck turned to see Missouri curling in on herself between the stove and the back door, cookware on the floor at her feet and her hands shoved hard against her ears.   
  
“You need to calm him down,” Castiel said, pulling Chuck into the room with Jesus.  
  
“It’s just a pillow fort,” Chuck said. His whole body wanted him to hide under the desk and rock back and forth. He was on his way there when Castiel pulled him back by his sleeve.  
  
“Now!”  
  
“All right, all right.” Chuck switched directions and approached Jesus, who was tearing the bed sheet roof off the fort. “Hey, Jesus,” he tried, laying a hand on the guy’s shoulder. God, the lights in here were bright. “It’s okay. It’s okay, man. Don’t let what he said get to you. Lucifer is a—well, he’s kinda built a career on being an asshole.”  
  
Jesus’s fingers clenched in the bed sheet. He stopped throwing things but didn’t look up.   
  
“Look, he doesn’t even know you. I know you, and you’re not those things, okay?” Chuck moved his hand tentatively, rubbing a circle between the guy’s shaking shoulders. “You’re not broken. You’re just having a rough time of things right now - and hey, who isn’t? Doesn’t stop you from being a good guy. And a good friend.”  
  
Jesus let out a long breath. Without looking Chuck in the eye, he turned toward him and stepped into an awkward hug, his nose pressing against Chuck’s collar. Chuck wrapped his arms around him, trying not to wince at the fingers digging hard into his back.   
  
Outside, the voices dropped away suddenly. Chuck’s heartbeat stopped thudding against his ribcage and slowed. He took a deep breath, and his whole body relaxed.  
  
“What the hell did I just feel?” Missouri called from the kitchen, her voice wavering.  
  
“Projection,” Castiel said, slumping against the door frame. “The bumper sticker says Jesus is love, but he could also be anger, sorrow, glee…panic…whatever will open the masses’ minds to the divine message. I’m going to hazard a guess that he’s not really in control of his abilities right now.”  
  
Jesus shook his head against Chuck’s shoulder.   
  
Chuck patted his back. “It’s been a rough night, buddy - for all of us.”   
  
Castiel sank slowly against the door frame until he was sitting on the floor with his knees bent up toward his chest and his face in his hands.   
  
“Castiel?” Chuck tried over Jesus’s shoulder. “If you want to, I dunno, talk about your gra—”  
  
“I’m hungry,” Castiel interrupted, as if Chuck hadn’t spoken at all. “I’d like to eat.”  
  
So he wasn’t even going to address the grace thing. Chuck’s shoulders slumped. “Okay, we can do that. What do you want?”  
  
Castiel shuddered. “Anything but burgers.”  
  
***  
  
Having Castiel back was awesome. They fell back into their old BFF ways immediately, no effort required. Chuck got a boom box from the attic, and the two of them rocked out to Ace of Base at full volume in the den, playing leg guitar, drinking, and talking about all the cool things they were going to do when the apocalypse was averted. No one bothered them, and they were up all night making plans and mapping out road trips on the 1995 atlas from Chuck’s glove compartment, certain of their own survival. Because with Castiel around again, Chuck had an odd, sort of prophetic sense that everything was going to turn out just—  
  
“Chuck, are you paying attention?”  
  
—fine.  
  
Chuck rubbed his eyes. Sam was glowering at him from across the kitchen table. Again. The guy was a champion glowerer. If making guilt-inducing facial expressions ever became an Olympic sport, he and Missouri could be Team USA. They’d clean up.  
  
“Yeah,” Chuck said, even though it was anything but the truth. He’d been doing the internal narration thing again while the fearless leader was talking. Again. He couldn’t seem to stop doing that - and it wasn’t even accurate internal narration, it was happy-verse versions of the evening. No one to hear it but himself, and he was still lying. That seemed like the healthy, well-adjusted thing to do.  
  
He glanced at the crowd in the kitchen. Directly around the table were the big players - Missouri, Crowley, Dean, and Castiel. Representatives of Sam’s eco-friendly demon army crammed in behind them, making the kitchen feel like the inside of a Polly Pocket compact. Chuck had dated a girl in college who collected those things. They were small. Like “How many of these can I fit up my nose?” small. Not that he’d tried. Because that’d be kinda weird and, uh, hard to explain to the emergency room nurse. Oh, hell. He was lying in his internal narration again.  
  
Anyway. Apocalypse meeting.  
  
“All we need from you is Lucifer’s location,” Sam said.  
  
In front of the whole room, Chuck couldn’t say no. He nodded, staring at the table.   
  
“We’re really going to trust the prophet as our informant?” Crowley scoffed. “Have you  _seen_  him? He still wears Looney Toons boxers.”  
  
“Y’know what, I’m not gonna take criticism from a guy who doesn’t knock at the bathroom door,” Chuck shot back, half hiding his head behind one arm.   
  
“And Tweety Bird of all characters! What are you, a twelve-year-old girl? Even Lilith wouldn’t—”  
  
“We’re going to trust the prophet,” Castiel interrupted, his voice so firm that Crowley shut his mouth and raised his hands in mock surrender. Castiel cleared his throat and said, a little quieter, “He has an amazing gift, even among the prophets. He could pinpoint the location of stashed away liquor from a passing vision.”   
  
A few of the demons made impressed noises, and Chuck guessed he was going to make some new friends the next time the booze ran dry.  
  
“So, task force,” Dean said, planting his palms on the table. “All of us fight the lackeys, but when we get into Lucifer’s personal bubble, Sam and I need backup. In case Heaven tries to get in on the fray. Or to pick up the sword in case we fail.”  
  
Chuck had heard the word “fail” about a million times in his life - mostly with an “-ing” or a “-ure” at the end of it and aimed at himself - but this one held a special kind of gravity. The kind of gravity that only came with euphemisms and uncomfortable pauses in a roomful of demons.  
  
“It’ll be dangerous,” Dean said, the bravado back in his voice. “You’ll be taking on the devil right beside us. This is one of those world-saving hero missions that earns you a pep talk about glory and immortal actions, people. Show of hands - who’s in?”  
  
The room went silent. One of the demons raised her hand, then faked out and scratched her ear instead. Dean eyed the room with his mouth drawn in a hard line.   
  
Missouri gave a little laugh at the table and raised hers, too. “I have got to see Dean Winchester give this pep talk.”  
  
Crowley raised one finger like he was ordering another drink. “Why not.”  
  
Castiel raised his hand without a word, and Chuck’s stomach plummeted.   
  
“Anyone else?” Dean called, searching the room again. His eyes didn’t even pass over Chuck. “All right. Task force, we’ll talk more once we’ve got intel. Bobby’s on his way down from South Dakota, and I got a hunch he’ll want in on this, too. Anyone who wants to stick around for Anna’s funeral, we’ll be burning her down at the end of the yard in twenty.”   
  
***  
  
Chuck sorta watched Anna’s funeral from the porch for about ten minutes. He couldn’t see much - it was all the way at the bottom of the slope of Missouri’s yard, and Sam had put up a bunch of sigils that cloaked the whole yard from anyone more than a few feet away, so the whole yard sort of shimmered like it was under a veil. In the next yard over, a little old lady pruned her rose bushes, totally oblivious to the burning body thirty feet away or the hordes of demons hanging out in their tents. It was totally a wizard trick. For all the neighbors knew, they could be hiding freaking Hogwarts under that veil.   
  
The idea launched Chuck’s imagination into a debate with itself over who was scarier - Lucifer or Voldemort. Voldemort had the bad guy robes and the total lack of nose, which was Uncanny Valley material if Chuck had ever seen it, but Lucifer didn’t need a wand to do his evil, and he wasn’t, well, fictional. Except that until this past year, Chuck had kind of thought he  _was_  fictional, and what if Voldemort was real, too, and Rowling was just another prophet, and—from there on, it morphed into  _Stranger Than Fiction_ /real person fanfic crossover territory, and he had to end that train of thought.  
  
Chuck gave up on squinting out at the funeral when Castiel started singing. He barely recognized the voice without a phat beat behind it - the song was some kind of hymn in Aramaic or Enochian or Angel Pig Latin or something, and it made his heart ache. Chuck had made a point in his life to specifically collect music that didn’t hurt his heart (with the notable exception of Sarah McLaughlan, but nobody had to know that), so when he started to get choked up, he left the porch.  
  
A group of demons were watching TV in the living room, and they sounded like they were enjoying themselves, so Chuck pulled up a chair to join them. “What’re we watching?”   
  
“ _Divine Design,_ ” answered one of the demons, a fat man in a tweed vest. “Crowley’s convinced Candice Olson is one of ours.”  
  
Crowley took a sip from a small silver flask. “The woman is single-handedly bringing back beige. If that’s not demonic activity, I’ll eat my Oxfords.”  
  
Chuck wasn’t really much for interior decorating shows, but the demons MST3Ked the crap out of it, and he had nowhere else to be, so he stuck around. They got through a handful of episodes, and then a flamboyant man in a tank top came on the screen talking about paint colors. The demons started throwing candy wrappers at the TV, and Chuck excused himself to someplace slightly less wrathful.  
  
That place happened to be the back porch, and for the first time since he’d been assigned the awful sleeping quarters, it was occupied when he got there. Occupied by a tangle of legs and a naked back he’d seen way too many times in visions.   
  
Chuck sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Hi, guys.”  
  
Dean leapt from the couch, pulling a nearby shirt up to cover his bare chest. Modesty looked really weird on him. So did blushing. He backed into a stack of boxes, causing a minor avalanche of dusty paperbacks. A chorus of demon laughter rolled in from the back yard.  
  
“Chuck,” said Castiel, who didn’t seem to mind being sprawled out half-naked on the couch in front of his friend. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“I sleep here. The den got kinda claimed. What’re you two doing out here? I mean, besides the, um…” Chuck pointedly turned his eyes to the ceiling as Dean zipped up.   
  
“‘S nothing you haven’t peeped in on before,” Dean muttered. “What are you looking for up there, adjectives? I could throw out a few for you.”  
  
Chuck shook his head, ducking out into the back hallway. “No, y’know what, you guys go ahead. The place is all yours. I’ll just go see if Jesus will let me camp out on the floor in the den.”  
  
“Wait,” Castiel called, pulling on his shirt. Passing Dean a whispered message and a kiss, he followed Chuck out into the house. “I’ll stay with you tonight.”  
  
“You sure about that? Missouri doesn’t abide sexual tension at the kitchen table.”  
  
“I’ll add to my morning to-do list. Dean understands.”  
  
Dean didn’t look particularly understanding, wearing half his shirt and a frown, but Chuck wasn’t going to argue. Maybe he was understanding on the inside. “Seriously,” Chuck said, lowering his voice, “it’s your first night out of the green room. Enjoy yourself.”  
  
“It’s my first night out of the green room,” Castiel whispered back. “Do you know how much time I just spent in a room with Dean Winchester? As much as I care for him, right now I welcome a reprieve. Dean has a limited stock of knock-knock jokes, and in the past few days, I’ve heard every one of them multiple times.”   
  
Chuck had, too, but he didn’t want to trigger a memory of the experience by giving it a thought. “Anyway, I’m not sure Jesus will even let me camp out on the floor, much less put up with the two of us.”   
  
“He’s  _Jesus_ ,” Castiel said, knocking on the door to the den. When Jesus opened it, he extended his hand and said, “Hello. We haven’t been formally introduced - I’m Castiel, former angel of the Lord. Would you mind if we spent the night in here with you?”  
  
Jesus took his hand for a quick, tentative shake, then opened the door wider to let them in. The sofa-bed was set up like it had been before the fort, but now with sheets neatly piled on one arm and extra cushions stacked on the floor. If Chuck hadn’t known better, he would’ve thought that Jesus had carefully disassembled the fort, not torn the thing apart. He’d cleaned himself up, too, changing out of the shapeless Bible chic stuff he’d been wearing and into a pair of cargo pants and a muscle shirt that had probably come from Missouri’s Pile O’ Nephew Stuff in the attic.  
  
“See?” Castiel said.  
  
Chuck dragged his feet into the den, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his hoodie even though it was probably too hot to be wearing a hoodie. “Yeah, well…I mean…”  
  
Castiel narrowed his eyes. “You…don’t want me here?”  
  
“No!” Chuck said quickly. “No, I do! I just—” He slumped against the door as it closed. God, why was he so full of fail? Thirty seconds alone with Castiel, and he was already starting to pick apart the threads of their happy reunion. He ran his hands back through his hair and gripped tufts of it like a crazy person on a sitcom. “Man, you’re the friend I always wanted when I was a kid. You have no idea. I was this tiny little nerd with an original  _Trek_  lunchbox, and I used to bring my action figures to school and make up stories about them exploring the alien planet of the cafeteria. I spent second through fourth grade eating at a table with the lunch ladies, because they were the only ones who never made fun of me.” He dropped his arms. “My parents didn’t get me; nobody did. I grew up feeling like I was the one freak kid that Professor Xavier had forgotten to send for.”  
  
“I don’t understand,” Castiel said. “Charles Xavier only taught mutants. Seeing as your powers come from the Lord, you would never have been called. Unless God tweaks genetics to produce prophets.”  
  
“I’m not talking literally,” Chuck said, “but this is a perfect example of what I mean, Castiel - you get me! You really do. You would’ve been right there with me in the cafeteria, sending Batman and Spock on an away mission to the napkin basket.”  
  
Castiel sat down on the edge of the bed, right next to Jesus, who was watching them curiously. “I would have.”  
  
“And in middle school, when my dad moved out for a while, you would’ve had me over to your place every weekend to distract me and read comics.” He was revising personal history again, writing freaking fanfiction of his own life, but he didn’t care. “And in eleventh grade, when Sandy Weems broke my heart, you would’ve taken it seriously even though we’d only been dating for a week and a half. And you’d’ve told me that smoking away the pain was a really bad idea, and I wouldn’t have ended up crashing my hatchback into a pond by the grocery store at 2am. Or at least you would’ve come by with a blanket to sit with me until the police took me home.”  
  
Castiel smiled a little. “I would have.”  
  
“And I wish you would have. I’ve never had a friend who would have until recently, and—” Chuck sighed, rolling his eyes up toward the boob light on the ceiling. “I have no idea what I’m doing. And I mean, that’s true for me on so many subjects, but this is the one I really screwed up. You’ve been so awesome to me that I want to make you the Mary Sue of my formative years, and meanwhile I lied to you, acted greedily, kept secrets, introduced you to truly horrible music…”   
  
“Saved my life,” Castiel added.  
  
Chuck shook his head. “And now that I know how wrong I was, I can’t even help you. I can’t get your grace back for you. I can’t protect you. I can’t even have your back in battle. All I can do is have the painful death vision with incomplete information. I appreciate you trying to spend time with me, but I have no idea why you wanna waste part of what’s probably your last few days on earth with me.”  
  
The room was silent for a few moments. Then Castiel let out the most long-suffering sigh Chuck had ever heard and said to Jesus, “Has he been doing this low self-esteem crap the entire time I’ve been gone?”  
  
Jesus pursed his lips and nodded.   
  
“Come here,” Castiel said to Chuck. The prophet let go of the door and took a seat on the edge of the bed next to his friend. Castiel whupped him hard upside the head.   
  
“Ow!” Chuck said, grabbing his head. That hurt way more than it looked like it should when Gibbs did it on  _NCIS._  
  
“Idiot,” Castiel hissed, and pulled him into an awkward hug, with Chuck still holding his own head. “You think I’d still be here if I didn’t get something out of being around you? Aside from the glaringly obvious act of heroism you conveniently forget when you beat yourself up, you’ve saved me. Without you, I don’t know how I would have survived being human. It’s hard and messy, and everyone seems to be making it up as they go, but you reminded me that there were elements of this world worth celebrating. You showed me what it was like to have a friend who didn’t care about my rank or what I could do for them.”   
  
“But I—” Chuck started.  
  
Castiel squeezed him a little too hard for comfort, and his voice went low, almost vicious. “Aside from all that, you get me. I would have brought my own action figures to the cafeteria to go on away missions with yours, Chuck. And I would have been completely jealous of your lunchbox.”  
  
Chuck swallowed. His head was sandwiched hard between his own hands, his nose smooshed against Castiel’s shoulder, and still, the words were more uncomfortable. “Are you done?”  
  
“Yes,” Castiel said.  
  
“You can, uh, let me go, then.”  
  
“Not until I know you’re listening. Promise me you’ll stop beating yourself up like this.”  
  
“This is emotional blackmail.”  
  
Castiel squeezed harder. “Say it.”  
  
“Fine! I don’t suck that much. You happy?”  
  
Castiel released him, grinning. Chuck shook out his arms, which had started to cramp. He wanted to mutter curses under his breath, dismiss this obviously stupid conversation as a bunch of meaningless schmoop, and go grab the dregs of his whiskey from the back porch. But, to be honest, hearing things like that from Castiel made him want to believe them.   
  
He thought of the first time Castiel had called him a good man, and how he’d wanted to believe it then, too. He thought of how it was that desire to prove those words right that made him throw himself on Zachariah’s sword. Maybe having a friend who believed in him had actually made him a better person. If that was the case, maybe he should just shut up and listen to the guy.  
  
And in any case, he probably shouldn’t be a jerk about it around Jesus. Not that Jesus seemed to care. In the days that he’d been here, he’d dealt with swearing, insults, drunkenness, and demons - sometimes all at once - and had yet to take offense. Right now, Jesus was leaning back against the sofa, hands behind his head, watching the two of them with an awed expression.   
  
“What’re you looking at?” Chuck said.   
  
Jesus smirked and shook his head. Changing the subject, he reached for the next DVD in the stack they’d been working their way through:  _The Breakfast Club._    
  
“Fitting,” Chuck said, popping the DVD into the external drive that was sitting at the foot of the bed. “We need more fat donut pie?”  
  
Jesus pushed a Super America bag of donuts and fruit pies toward him. The guy had stockpiled.  
  
“‘Fat donut pie’?” Castiel said, tilting his head.   
  
That’s right - Castiel had yet to be introduced! Chuck clapped his hands and said over his shoulder, “Jesus, if you would demonstrate for our guest?”  
  
Jesus smiled for the first time since before the oil was poured on the driveway. Grabbing a blueberry donut and a strawberry Hostess fruit pie from the bag, he popped both into the spare microwave he’d added to the fort the day before he tore it apart. Castiel stared hard at the objects on the tray inside, as if they might do something unexpected when heated. The microwave beeped, and Jesus pulled out the baked goods. He took a bite of each himself, then passed them to Chuck, who did the same.   
  
“Fat donut pie,” Chuck said through a mouthful of fruit filling and sugar. Castiel stared hard at him - god, he’d missed that old angelic stare. “Yes?” he said, swallowing.  
  
Castiel frowned. “I’m trying to decide whether you’ll die of liver failure or diabetes.”  
  
“Don’t think we’ve gotta worry about that. It’s the one upside of the apocalypse.” He handed the sweets to Castiel, who took them with a suspicious look. “Eat.”  
  
As the opening credits of the movie played, Castiel bit carefully into the snacks. His lips curled, and he licked strawberry filling from his chin, thinking way too hard for someone eating gas station food. After a few moments’ contemplative silence, he said, “It needs something. Missouri has sprinkles in the pantry.”  
  
“Sprinkles!” Chuck said. “Of course! It’s always better when the donuts have sprinkles.”   
  
Castiel fetched the sprinkles from the pantry, and the three of them stretched out across the sofa-bed, watching the movie and trying not to get sprinkles on Missouri’s spare sheets. It was past 2am at the tail end of the most stressful days in Chuck’s recent memory, one ally in ashes at the bottom of the yard and Lucifer’s boot prints next to the driveway, but settling in between Jesus and Castiel, Chuck couldn’t help being happy. Tucking his knees up near his chin to support his fat donut pie, he pushed thoughts of impending doom out of mind for the night and let himself smile.   
  
***  
  
The door creaking open woke Chuck. The face of the wall clock was too badly cracked to read from this angle, but based on the dim light flowing in through the window, he guessed it had to be just after dawn. From the entrance, Dean surveyed the room, made a surprised little “o” with his mouth, and closed the door again like he was excusing himself from walking in on his parents.   
  
Chuck tried to sit up and found himself pinned to the bed by not one but two sets of foreign body parts. At his left side, Castiel was pressed against him, head and arm on shoulder and leg on leg, drooling against the fabric of his t-shirt. At his right side, Jesus had curled into a cozy ball, draping one arm across Chuck’s middle.   
  
Chuck sighed. It figured. People had been falling asleep on him for years. An ex-girlfriend had once told him he was “snuggly,” which he was pretty sure translated to “roughly the size and consistency of a body pillow.” At least this time it was just Castiel and Jesus, instead of girls who’d shoved him into the friend zone for the platonic cuddling benefits.  
  
Chuck played a quick game of sleeping people Tetris to extricate himself from the bed, dabbed drool off his shoulder with one of Castiel’s dirty t-shirts, and wandered out into the house.  
  
Dean’s hair was framed in the glass panel on the front door. Chuck let himself out onto the front stoop to find the hunter leaning against the side of the house, nursing a PBR and watching the sun climb over the horizon.   
  
“Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?” Chuck said.   
  
“You should talk. I’ve seen what’s in your cupboards.”  
  
For the first time in weeks, Chuck thought of his house. His poor, mangled house with the hole in the kitchen and the blood-spattered walls. All that had been in the cupboards when he left were a couple of bread loaves, some peanut butter, and a fifth of whiskey. Squirrels had probably gotten into the bread by now - if not the rest of it. He wouldn’t put it past the squirrels in that neighborhood to steal a man’s whiskey.  
  
“Did you want something?” Chuck asked, switching gears. “I could wake up Castiel if you two were gonna—”  
  
“Don’t worry about it.” Dean took a sip and studied his can. “So, tell me, Chuck - is he all right?”  
  
“You’re asking me?”  
  
“Dude, don’t play dumb. You know him better than I do. I’m just the guy he’s…seeing.”  
  
“The word is ‘boyfriend,’ Dean.”  
  
“Whatever. How’s he doing? With the grace news and everything.”  
  
Chuck leaned against the wall next to Dean. “Well, he’s not talking about it, so pretty crappy, I think.”  
  
“Son of a bitch,” Dean muttered into his can. “What do you do to help a fallen angel when his grace is being held hostage and the apocalypse is looming overhead?”  
  
“We watched  _The Breakfast Club._ ”  
  
“You nerds are  _The Breakfast Club._  You’re Ally Sheedy, Cas is that kid with the flare gun in his locker, and Jesus is Emilio Estevez.”  
  
Chuck scoffed. “I’m not Ally Sheedy. You’re Ally Sheedy.”  
  
“I’m badass Judd Nelson. You’ve got dandruff and sticky lunchmeat problems.”  
  
“Do not. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.” Chuck watched Dean polish off the last of the can and crumple it in his hand. “Are you mad at me for not keeping Cas out of trouble?”  
  
Dean chuckled. “Nah, man. That was a doomed mission to begin with.”  
  
“He’s—” Chuck swallowed. “He’s probably going to die when you go up against Lucifer.”   
  
Dean blinked hard at the horizon. “Yeah, he told me about that. You got any more details?”  
  
“No. You’re gonna let him fight anyway, aren’t you?”  
  
“Much as I’d love to put on the child locks in the car and make him wait it out in the parking lot, it’s not really up to me. Cas isn’t under anyone’s orders anymore. It’s one of the downsides of free will - can’t stop a guy from throwing himself in front of the train. Or sword,” he added, glancing at Chuck.   
  
They stood there for a few minutes, watching the clouds around the horizon.   
  
“Why is Jesus Emilio Estevez?” Chuck said, furrowing his brow.  
  
“Community hero, pressure from an overbearing dad, doesn’t want to deal with all the expectations on him.”   
  
“Ah.”  
  
“You think he could really save the day if he wanted to? Anna seemed pretty convinced. Sam, too.”  
  
“Maybe. He’s got a lot of power, and if he could get a hold on it—” Chuck shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. He’s not here for that. If we tried to force him into it, we’d be no better than the dickheads upstairs. And considering he’s supposed to win it for them, not for us, if he threw down with Lucifer, it’d probably end with Lucifer in a fiery lake and Heavenly peace broken out out across the land.” An ancient RV lumbered up the block and came to a stop in front of the house. “You think we have a chance without him?” Chuck asked, quieter.  
  
Dean shrugged. “All I know is we don’t have any chance if we sit around with our junk in our hands.”  
  
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t— “After all the deleted scenes of junk in your hands in the Winchester Gospel, I would’ve thought you’d like to go out that way.”  
  
“Prophet?”   
  
“Yeah?”  
  
Dean leaned over Chuck and patted him on the shoulder a little too hard. “Eat my shorts.” With that, he turned and walked down the front steps, headed toward the RV at the curb.  
  
“Oh, I get it. That was a Judd Nelson line from—because we were just talking about—yeah, okay.” Chuck shut his mouth.   
  
“Tell Cas to find me when he wakes up,” Dean called over his shoulder. “And get on that vision thing.”  
  
The RV door swung open, and Bobby stepped out. Dean greeted him with a clap on the arm and a grin. Chuck hung back, watching the heroes talk. When he saw words like “impending doom” and “devil” forming on their lips, he excused himself from the scene.  
  
***  
  
Missouri’s house had reached maximum capacity. Not that it wasn’t already there, what with the demons in tents in the yard, but having Dean and Castiel back seemed to be the tipping point. Someone occupied every flat surface - couch, chair, floor, back steps, whatever. Sam planned attack strategies from the kitchen table. Demons bogarted the living room and TV. Jesus hid in the den. Castiel and Dean, once they were both awake, went wherever they were needed - which was often with Missouri, who had taken to circling the house like the host of a party, carrying messages and making sure everyone was getting on all right. It wasn’t like she could go on running her psychic readings business, since Crowley had absconded to her parlor with Sam’s laptop for a Best of YouTube marathon before the world - and the internet - ended. Three and a half hours in, Chuck could still hear groans and laughter coming from the parlor - evidently Crowley’s marathon consisted mostly of dumb teenager injuries and  _American Idol_  wannabes. And, he could’ve sworn, some Lady Gaga.  
  
The point was, anywhere that Chuck could’ve sat down to privately knock out a vision of Lucifer, someone had already claimed. Several someones, in most cases. Even the bathrooms, which humans and demons kept filtering in and out of like the best ride at Six Flags. Chuck suspected that, were it not for the whole “probably gonna be dead by tomorrow night” thing, Missouri would be ripping them all a new one for exploding her water bill.  
  
The only person in the household who had any private space, bathroom or not, was—  
  
“You wanna camp out in my bathroom?” Bobby said, standing in the door of his RV wearing a camping vest and a bemused look.   
  
“Just for an hour or two,” Chuck said, holding up the day planner. “To write. Nothing else. I just need someplace private to work out this vision for tomorrow.”  
  
Bobby raised an eyebrow at him but let him in. “Guess I need to talk to Sam about that ‘tomorrow’ thing, anyway.”  
  
The RV smelled like 409 and the inside of a machine shed. “Thanks, Bobby,” Chuck said, sliding past the dusty kitchenette to get to the bathroom. “It’s good to see you, by the way.”  
  
“You too, kid,” Bobby said, and shut the door behind himself. A moment later, the hinges squeaked and his face appeared around the corner. “Don’t touch anything or I’ll have your ass for my mantle.”  
  
Chuck nodded and closed himself inside the bathroom. It was just as dusty as the rest of the old RV, but smelled strongly of lavender hand soap. He pulled aside the curtain for the shower compartment with a rattle, but instead of an empty basin to sit in, he found several shelves stocked with guns and ammo. The discovery made him want to investigate the rest of the RV for a moment - find out where else Bobby might have stashed surprise weapons - but the threat of becoming a mantle trophy stopped him.  
  
Chuck sat down on the toilet lid, pulled his legs up under himself, and opened the day planner to the next blank page. He tried not to think about what he was doing, but as he pressed the pen to paper and flipped the “Lucifer” switch in his mind, his hand shook.   
  
 _“You really thought you could save him, Castiel? Shame they took your good sense along with your grace.”  
  
The blade made a white arc as it dove toward him. Castiel felt his breath knocked from him before the pain registered. But once it did, it was all he could feel: a single bolt of heat through the middle of—_  
  
Chuck’s stomach flipped. No. No, no, this was way too far along. Where was the “Skip” button? He gave the switchboard a mental shove.  
  
 _Blood tasted strange. Castiel had tasted it a thousand times before, but never so much, and never without distraction, so he’d never noticed. It tasted metallic and organic, pennies and flesh. The combination fascinated him, although he couldn’t quite hold onto the thought as his mind fell toward the dark. How many things had he failed to notice since his feet first touched the earth? How much of God’s creation had he missed because he was so busy focusing on God’s plan?  
  
Lord, he didn’t even know what grass felt like on bare skin—_  
  
Goddammit, NO. Chuck slammed his pen down on the sink and pressed his fists hard against his eyes. No. No freaking way was he going through this. In his mind, he kicked the switchboard several times. Taking a deep breath, he reached for his pen again.  
  
 _Fitting that he’d die in a church in Lawrence, Castiel thought, watching his blood pool across the flagstone floor. Someone’s shout echoed across the chamber, but he couldn’t make out the voice. The light from the stained glass filtered in overhead, shading the bodies of his fallen companions in the blues and golds of the design.  
  
A dove. The design was a dove. As his vision faded, Castiel almost laughed. Dying alone in a house of God under the wings of a dove._  
  
Tears wobbled on Chuck’s eyelashes. He shook his head, sending them skidding down his cheeks. A church in Lawrence. A church with a blue and gold dove on the window. That had to be enough. God, please let that be enough. His chest constricted, and Lucifer’s voice bounced around in his head again, choking off his thoughts.   
  
Then his breath. Chuck felt a panic attack coming on, and there wasn’t anyone around with a comforting hand on his back or a paper bag for him. As he struggled to pull in air, he searched for something else to distract him -  _anything_ else - hitting random switches on his mental switchboard. The first one that conjured up a scene was the “Dean/Cas” switch.  
  
 _“I’ve got a surprise for you.”  
  
“Dean, I’ve seen the upstairs of a house before.”  
  
“Eyes closed, Big Bird,” Dean said, hands on his shoulders. Castiel shook his head but kept his eyes squeezed shut, letting Dean lead him forward. They stopped somewhere near the top of the stairs, and Dean said, “Now, you can look.”  
  
Castiel blinked. This was Sam’s bedroom, but with candles burning along the windowsill. “This is Sam’s room,” he said.  
  
“It’s ours tonight.” Dean pulled him inside and shut the door. “Took all the Funyuns the Super America would sell me, but Sam’s agreed to sleep downstairs.”  
  
Castiel paused to assess the information. “This is our bedroom…and you lit candles.”  
  
“I lit candles.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Man, you are so freaking dense sometimes,” Dean said, and pulled him into a kiss. Castiel laughed, the sound humming against his mouth. Dean cupped Castiel’s face in his hands and gave him a somber look. “I know I use this line a lot, but Cas…this might be our last night on earth. You wanna make the most of it?”  
  
Between personal experience and his first year observing Dean Winchester, Castiel had heard that line enough to know exactly what it meant. He kissed the man back soundly.  
  
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Dean murmured.  
  
“I’ll get the anal sex pamphlets from the car,” Castiel announced, and broke off the embrace to run downstairs. _  
  
Chuck leaned against the wall of the RV bathroom, relishing the ability to take a deep breath again.   
  
Okay. So he had some idea of Lucifer’s location. This was what his visions had been coming to ever since the archangel had ripped through his house. He’d done his part for the team. He could tear out the pages about Lucifer, hand them to Sam, camp out in the den with Jesus while the cavalry rode out into battle, and help rebuild in the event that the good guys actually won. Or, worst case scenario, die blameless.  
  
He’d done his part.   
  
He was done. Finished. Finito. Out.   
  
Chuck closed the day planner and twisted his fists in his hair, curling in on himself.   
  
“What do I do now?”   
  
***  
  
When Chuck stepped back into the house, all heads turned to him. Judging by the expectant expressions, Bobby had mentioned his writing plans. The demons watching Shark Week looked up from a show about wicked bites. One jogged into the parlor and came back with Crowley and another demon in tow to watch him. The attention reminded Chuck of the one walk of shame he’d taken through his college dorm - which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that the girl had stolen his pants. He clutched the day planner to his chest, feeling so exposed he might as well not be wearing pants.  
  
Missouri came out of the den, spotted him, and came over to meet him. “Chuck! Did you—” Reading him, she nodded. “Okay, then. Sam’s in the kitchen laying out plans.”  
  
“Do you know of a church in town with windows like this?” Chuck said, pushing the image of the stained glass to the front of his mind.  
  
Missouri snapped her fingers. “That’s St. John’s - it’s just on the outskirts of town. Got closed down last year - foreclosure, I think. I used to go some Sundays to hear my nephew sing in the choir.”  
  
“So you know the grounds?”  
  
“Better than Google Maps, which is what Sam was planning on using.”  
  
“Good.” Chuck marched side-by-side with Missouri into the kitchen, where Sam and Castiel were hunched over a laptop, the angel sword, and an array of lore texts. Dean hung back by the counter with Bobby, arguing Bible semantics. Jesus stood at the microwave, watching something on the tray inside turn.  
  
Okay, this was a bigger crowd than he’d been planning to address. Chuck straightened up to his full height, bolstering his will, and strode right up to the kitchen table. He slapped the day planner down on the table in front of Sam, cover-side up.   
  
Sam peered down at the kittens frolicking on the day planner, then up at Chuck. His mouth dropped open and formed a slow smile. “You actually did it.”  
  
“St. John’s church, just outside Lawrence,” Chuck said, nodding toward Missouri. “She knows the grounds. We move on this tomorrow.”  
  
“You think we’ll be ready by tomorrow?” Bobby said.   
  
“You think we’ll ever be ready?” Chuck countered.   
  
“Good point,” Sam said, and typed something on his laptop. “Wow, that’s only about a mile and a half from here. Okay, guys, we’ve gotta get our facts straight and figure out a plan of entry.”  
  
“One more thing,” Chuck said. The words caught a little in his throat.   
  
“What?”   
  
Chuck raised his chin, trying to look like he knew what he was doing. “That special task force that’s going for a face-to-face with Lucifer? I’m on it.”  
  
“You?” Sam said, his giant forehead wrinkling.  
  
“No,” Castiel started, rising from his seat. “You don’t have to—”  
  
“No, I do,” Chuck said, cutting him off. “I had an epiphany in Bobby’s bathroom—”   
  
“Whoa, whoa,” Dean said. “Too much information.”  
  
“Not like that,” Chuck said.   
  
“Bobby has his own bathroom?” Sam said, looking more interested in that tidbit than the quest in front of him.  
  
“Anyway!” Chuck said loudly, raising his hands. “Castiel, I found Lucifer’s location by watching your death play out. You were bleeding out on a freaking church floor - alone. And I realized…knowing that, I can’t just stay behind and hope for the best.” He gave Castiel a stern look. “My life would suck without you. Kelly Clarkson sang that, but I don’t care - it’s still true.”  
  
Castiel swallowed hard, his eyes wide. “Chuck—”  
  
“And, y’know, a bro shall not let another bro walk into a hostile situation alone. I’m pretty sure that includes brutal, lonely deaths.” Chuck shook his head. “Maybe my vision’s wrong. Maybe we’ll win - hell, maybe I’ll be the tipping piece that lets us smoke the bastard—” he ignored a snort from Bobby’s direction “—but if we lose, Cas, I’m not gonna let you die alone.”  
  
“So, what?” Sam said. “We strap you to Cas with a bungee cord and send you into battle?”  
  
“I can fight,” Chuck said.   
  
Castiel stared Chuck down. “You’ve never hit anyone in your life.”  
  
“So give me a gun,” Chuck said, glaring back at him.   
  
“You’ve never fired a gun.”  
  
“BB gun, summer after eighth grade,” Chuck said. Leaning forward, he flattened his palms against the table and raised his chin. “And I held the arcade’s high score in  _Duck Hunt_  for four years straight.”   
  
A loud  _ding_  broke the tension. Everyone glanced across the kitchen. Jesus stood with one hand on the microwave door, his eyes on the group and his jaw slack.   
  
“You’ve had worse allies back you up,” Missouri said in the silence.   
  
“All right,” Sam said, waving a hand. “Give the prophet a gun.”  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

And there was much rejoicing. Chuck couldn’t resist making the  _Monty Python_  reference in his head as the party erupted around him. The demons dragged out all the liquor, making a dense forest of bottles on the kitchen table, Missouri started doing shots, and Sam’s laptop suddenly sprouted a playlist of dance beats that Chuck was pretty sure hadn’t been downloaded by legal means.   
  
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Crowley announced, holding a drink over the gathered demons, hunters, and apocalyptic hangers-on, “this is quite likely our last night on earth. I propose a toast.”   
  
Glasses and bottles of liquor sloshed as they were hoisted in the air.   
  
Crowley gave his glass of Jager a contemplative look and said, “To humanity. They may be entirely responsible for unleashing this mess of an apocalypse—”  
  
“Hey!” Dean said.  
  
“And an unsettling odor follows them around - sort of a foul musk—”  
  
Missouri elbowed him in the ribs.  
  
Crowley smirked. “But they did invent alcohol, so where would we be without them?”   
  
“To humanity!” the demons echoed, and everyone drank.   
  
The party swung into motion, with drinking games around the table, dancing in the living room, and pockets of conversation and laughter throughout the house. Missouri had even splurged and turned on the air conditioning. Grinning and slightly buzzed, Chuck stumbled into the den to grab his sweatshirt. This was the first time in weeks that he could wear it in temperature-appropriate conditions, and he’d be damned if he was going to waste that opportunity.  
  
He got a couple steps into the room before he stopped, grin dropping.  
  
Jesus was sitting on the floor on the far side of the sofa-bed, knees bent up against his chest and hands in his hair. It looked like he’d tried to dress up - a button-down shirt and an obvious attempt to comb his hair down - but he clearly wasn’t going anywhere.  
  
Sighing, Chuck closed the door. “Hey, dude. What’s up? Why aren’t you out there banging gongs with the rest of them?”   
  
Jesus shook his head. Chuck rounded the bed to sit next to him and almost tripped. Guilt surrounded the guy like a veil, and Chuck could feel him tugging at the projection, trying to keep it from expanding out into the house.   
  
Chuck sat down beside him, swallowing down what the guilt brought up. Lying to Castiel. Being a virtually useless prophet. Stealing Joey Nguyen’s toy tank in first grade. It took him a second to put together the pieces.  
  
“It’s not your fault if we fail,” he said, clapping Jesus on the knee. “Hell, if you weren’t down here seeking sanctuary, Heaven would probably be forcing you to win for their side, and then where would we be? Freaky Stepford Heaven on earth, that’s where. At least this way, we’ve got a chance.”  
  
No dice. Jesus ducked his head between his knees, and his hands fled again to his hair. The guilt concentrated around him, and this time, Chuck paid attention to it, trying to pick out what had brought it on.  
  
The first full image that the projection pulled out of his mind was his mother chastising him for wasting his time with novels.   
  
“Oh,” he said, swallowing hard. “I think I get it. This isn’t just about the end of the world. You think you’re a disappointment because you’re not living up to your destiny. And not just to us, but to—Jesus, dude, that’s some heavy family pressure.”  
  
Jesus nodded under his hands.   
  
“I know how you feel, man. My parents wanted me to be a dentist. Look how well that worked out.”   
  
Jesus raised his head to look at Chuck, his eyebrows making ripples on his forehead.   
  
“I know, right? Me, a dentist.” Chuck smirked, waving a hand in an arc in front of them. “It even sorta sounds like ‘destiny’ - ‘dentistry.’”  
  
Jesus let out a laugh that turned into a sniffle against his sleeve.  
  
“It’s not on the same scale as yours, but I get it. Someone else lays out a road in front of you and says, ‘Here you go. This is your life.’ Or afterlife, whatever.” Chuck slouched, leaning his head against the wall. “But it doesn’t work that way. That whole free will thing, y’know? I mean, hell, I’m a freaking prophet, and if you asked me point-blank, even I don’t believe in a concrete destiny.”   
  
His mind flew to Castiel’s death scene again, and he pushed it away. “I stopped writing down visions involving myself a long time ago. Mostly it’s because the idea scares the crap out of me, but it’s also sort of a ‘screw you’ to whoever up there is trying to put a road in front of me. I don’t need someone else to tell me where my life’s supposed to go, just like I didn’t need that anatomical tooth model for Christmas when I was nineteen. Thanks, Dad, I got the hint.”  
  
Jesus raised an eyebrow at him.   
  
“Anyway,” Chuck said, “it’s not really my place to give you advice.”   
  
Jesus shook his head quickly and made a summoning gesture with one hand. Go ahead.  
  
Chuck took a deep breath. Telling a messiah what to do was way beyond his pay grade. But the guy was also just his friend who was having a bad night. Shaking off nerves, he said, “You don’t have to do what your parents or destiny or some long-dead holy man’s scrolls say you’re supposed to do. It’s your life - find your own freaking road. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the whole point of living.” He chuckled. “Look at me - I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, I’m about to barrel headlong into the devil’s lair with a hand-me-down shotgun, and I still don’t have a nine-to-five job or a useful degree. But I’m okay with it, because this is the road I chose for myself. If I die tomorrow—”   
  
If he died tomorrow. God, he hadn’t even thought about it. There was a pretty good chance of that, even with the archangel on his shoulder. A chill went down Chuck’s middle. Jesus was waiting for him to finish his sentence. “If I die tomorrow,” he started again, “I think I’ll be okay with that, too. I figured out what was important to me, and I’ll be going out fighting for it. I know you’ve seen a lot of the crappy side of humanity, but I promise there’s a lot of it worth saving, too, I swear.”  
  
Jesus gave him a a soulful look and laid a hand on his shoulder. Next came a pretty clear “What do I do now?” look.  
  
“Stop guilting yourself, for one.”  
  
The projected emotion fizzled and receded. Jesus closed his eyes for a moment, as if willing it quiet inside his head.   
  
Chuck smiled. “Next, you get out of this room and enjoy yourself. It might be your last chance, and there’s pie in the kitchen.”   
  
He followed as Jesus got to his feet, and the two of them started out toward the party. At the door, Jesus paused, stopping Chuck with a hand at his arm. The guy’s mouth was open, like he wanted to say something. Chuck waited for a minute, but nothing came out.   
  
“Come on,” he said, and put on his grin again as he led Jesus out to the party.   
  
***  
  
In the morning, the kitchen was utterly silent. Missouri had cooked up a massive stack of pancakes - waffles’ less hot sister, as far as Chuck was concerned - and somehow even the usual lip-smacking and syrup bottle farts of pancake eating seemed absent. It was him, Missouri, Dean and Castiel, Sam, and for some reason Crowley - who seemed to have invited himself - sitting around the kitchen table with him, and yet no one had spoken. Chuck cut up his pancakes methodically, wondering with each swipe of the knife whether he’d be able to keep them down, if he ever managed to clear the lump in his throat long enough to swallow them. That was probably what everyone else was occupied with, too - pancake mortality thoughts.   
  
Well, that or—  
  
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Missouri said, flinging her cutlery down on her plate. “We’re all thinking it. Will someone just say it already so we can move on?”  
  
Crowley turned to Dean and Castiel and said, a little too eagerly, “Everyone heard you two last night.”  
  
Dean half-choked on a sausage link.   
  
Castiel only gave the demon an inquisitive head tilt. “Really? I would have thought this house had more solid construction than that.”  
  
“My house is plenty solid,” Missouri said, giving her plate a disdainful look. “You’re just loud.”  
  
“Ev-everyone?” Dean stammered, still swallowing.   
  
“Yeah,” Sam said, avoiding eye contact. “I heard the demons in the backyard rating your performance.”  
  
“Jesus couldn’t sleep,” Chuck said. “But if it helps, I’m sure he forgives you.”   
  
***  
  
Jesus didn’t look like forgiveness was on his mind - more despair, really. He sat on the sofa-bed in the den, hugging a pillow to his middle and watching  _The Breakfast Club_  on the old laptop for the third time since Chuck had woken up that morning.  
  
“Hey, hon,” Missouri said, setting a box of cookies down on the bedside table. “We’re taking off. Help yourself to—well, anything you like. There are leftover pancakes in the fridge, and I left the liquor cabinet unlocked in case you wanna go that route.”  
  
Jesus nodded, his eyes locked on the screen.   
  
Missouri paused for a second, her bottom lip sucked into her mouth like she was debating saying something, then reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m honored to have met you,” she said, giving him a smile.   
  
That got a reaction out of him. Jesus peeled himself away from the laptop and looked up at her, the edges of his lips curling up slightly. He patted her shoulder in return, then cupped a hand at the back of her neck and drew her down to plant a kiss on her forehead.   
  
Missouri chuckled. “You too.”   
  
Chuck stood at the doorway watching and feeling like he was intruding in someone else’s personal moment. But when Missouri said goodbye and left the room, Jesus turned immediately to him.   
  
“Big goodbye scene,” Chuck said, shrugging as he approached the bed.   
  
Jesus nodded, looking uncomfortable again. On the screen, the brainiac was narrating the group’s letter to Mr. Vernon.   
  
“I love this part.”  
  
Jesus nodded again.  
  
Way to make the end of the world as awkward as possible, Chuck told himself. As he shifted foot to foot, a shape in his hoodie pocket pressed against his side. He pulled it out and handed it to Jesus. “Hey, so, uh, the video rental place down the street had this. I thought you’d like it.”  
  
Jesus opened the DVD case and ran his fingertips over the surface of the  _Dogma_  disc.   
  
“And hey,” Chuck added with a forced little laugh, “if we don’t come back, I don’t think you’ll need to worry about returning it.”   
  
The guy smiled up at him in a way that didn’t quite reach his eyes and extended a hand to him.   
  
Chuck shook it. Jesus’s hand was warm and a little sweaty.“And, y’know…what she said.”  
  
A shrug.   
  
“Yeah, well.” Chuck shrugged, too, and let go of his hand. “Good luck, man.”  
  
That was it. As Chuck excused himself from the room for the last time, he heard Jesus swapping out discs on the external DVD player.   
  
***  
  
Chuck pretended everyone was just heading out on a big road trip. Yeah, that was it - an epic road trip. With trunks full of weapons. Dean had showed him how to operate the sawed-off that would be his own special prophet weapon this morning, and Chuck stood around while the heroes did hero-talk, holding the gun casually like an action hero on coffee break and trying not to look out of his mind with nerves.  
  
Which he wasn’t, honestly. It surprised him just how  _not_  out of his mind with nerves he was. His stomach was a little woobly, but not in an “Oh god oh god we’re all gonna die” way - more in the way it got woobly when he watched the climax of  _Return of the King._  Epic, life-changing crap was going down, but all he could really do was watch it unfold like he knew it would. He supposed he should be sad or upset or maybe rallying with the troops all “A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day!” But Chuck didn’t have it in him. He was just…resigned.  
  
Man, he’d make the worst Gondorian soldier.  
  
Car trunks slammed, Sam hollered orders at some of the demons, and suddenly everyone was piling into cars. Sam, Dean, Missouri, and Bobby led the caravan in the Impala, and Chuck brought up the rear with Castiel in the passenger seat. No one else seemed to want to share the station wagon with them - probably because the moment Castiel had called shotgun, he’d shoved Ace of Base back into the tape deck and cranked up the volume. Crowley approached and did a brisk turn on his heels once he heard the synthesizers, choosing instead to ride with some of his demonic colleagues.   
  
“Time!” Castiel sang.   
  
Chuck echoed, “Time!”   
  
“Close your eyes, see dreams of tomoooorrroooow! Time!”  
  
“Time!”   
  
“The wheels are turning ‘til eternityyyy!”  
  
“And as the darkness comes, I start to see a picture—” they both raised their hands toward the windshield “—of a lonely man, so clearly now, reaching out for meeeee!”  
  
“LEAD ME TO THE LIGHT,” Chuck crooned.  
  
“AND TAKE ME TO THE EDGE OF HEAVEN,” Castiel cried.  
  
“I’M STANDING IN THE NIGHT—”  
  
“LOOKING FOR THE EDGE OF HEAVEN—”  
  
Closing their eyes, they harmonized, “WE’LL BE TOUCHING THE EDGE OF HEAAAVEN!”  
  
“And sail the endless sea—” Castiel started.  
  
“Is Heaven really like that?” Chuck asked, dropping his hand to the steering wheel. Ace of Base continued singing without him.  
  
Castiel’s mouth dropped open slightly. “I’m fairly certain this song is a sex metaphor.”  
  
“Huh.” Chuck frowned at the back of the rusty Bronco in front of them in the caravan. “That puts a lot of their religious imagery in a different light.” Shaking off mental images, he said, “The real Heaven, though - what’s it like?”  
  
Castiel sighed, slumping back in his seat. “Do we have to have this conversation?”  
  
“If I’m gonna die today, I’d like to know what to expect.”  
  
“You’re not going to die.”  
  
“I could die. You don’t know. You’re not a prophet.”  
  
“Have you seen yourself die?” Castiel said, looking concerned.  
  
“Well, no…but I don’t do the Mary Sue visions thing.”  
  
“That’s always puzzled me.” Castiel rested his cheek on his knuckles. “Why not seek out visions of yourself, if you have the ability? Don’t you want to know what’s going to happen to you?”  
  
Chuck’s fingers tightened on the wheel. He didn’t seek out visions of himself because…well, because it seemed like a waste of time. An unnecessary subplot that would get cut in revision anyway. And if he reframed the end of the series to put himself at the center of it, wouldn’t that be like Stephen King level douchiness? Oh ho ho, the writer is the main character, isn’t he so freaking clever! Besides, he wasn’t interesting enough to be a main character. Or important enough. But saying any of that would probably get Castiel on his case, so he simply said, “No.”   
  
Castiel shook his head.   
  
Chuck cleared his throat. “So, Heaven. Do they get Netflix up there?”  
  
“Each individual’s Heaven is different,” Castiel said, his voice lower than usual. “You see what your soul desires to see, based on the life you lived. For some, it’s precious family outings; for others it’s one big moon bounce.”  
  
“Huh.” Chuck tried to think of his own best memories. His first time getting to second base. Late nights on IRC with his college gaming group. The day he found out his first novel was going to be published. Road tripping with Castiel. “What do you think you’ll see?”  
  
Castiel said nothing.   
  
Chuck wished he had an Omega 13 device to hop back 13 seconds in the past and take back the sentence. He’d forgotten - Castiel was a fallen angel. They probably didn’t get back into heaven.  
  
Well, that was frakking depressing. Chuck’s stomach knotted up, and for the first time since they’d started off on this foolish quest, he felt something other than resignation. Swerving the station wagon to a stop, he wrenched his door open and threw up on the roadside.  
  
When he pulled the door shut again, Castiel was already singing along to “Experience Pearls.” Chuck took a deep breath, put his foot back on the gas, and joined in.   
  
***  
  
Sam and Dean’s plan was remarkably unsneaky. They rumbled right up to the front of St. John’s along with their whole freaking entourage of allies and double-parked with the Impala’s speakers blaring. Even from his parking spot down the block, Chuck could make out the lyrics of Styx’s “Renegade” echoing across the churchyard.   
  
“You sure this is a good idea?” he asked as they all gathered on the sidewalk.   
  
“This will draw Lucifer’s minions right to us so we can fight ‘em,” Dean said.   
  
“Unless they hate Styx,” Sam added, and his brother gave him a look like he’d just said something horribly offensive.  
  
But Lucifer’s minions didn’t seem to have a problem with Styx. They appeared around the foundation of the church, poured from the front doors, and formed a blockade of neat lines in front of the building.  
  
Sam’s eco-friendly demon army grouped into a much less organized formation on the sidewalk. Bobby stepped out in front of them, Ruby’s demon-killing knife strapped to his chest along with a belt of holy water vials. He hoisted his rock salt rifle over his head, and for a second, Chuck saw King Théoden. But this leader didn’t make a speech. He just gave Sam’s assembled demons a look like he’d rather be dealing with pre-schoolers, shook his head, and said, “All right, kids. Let’s kick it in the ass.”  
  
And with that, the demon armies ran to meet each other, weapons upheld. Chuck cringed behind his sawed-off as the first blows fell.   
  
“Well, that was rather crude,” Crowley said.  
  
“Okay,” Sam said, gesturing for the others to follow him. He led Dean, Castiel, Missouri, Crowley, and Chuck through the small grove of trees beside the church and around the flank of the building, where the sounds of battle dimmed. Stopping just under the last of their tree cover, he said, “Missouri, where’s the next easy access point?”  
  
“Basement door,” she said, pointing. “It goes through the storage room and comes out in the community room. I helped set up the manger scene one year.”  
  
“Perfect,” Dean said, starting forward.   
  
Chuck grabbed his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”  
  
“Uh, into the battle that decides the fate of the earth?” Dean said, yanking his arm away.   
  
Chuck scoffed. “Not before you hug your brother, you’re not!”   
  
Sam and Dean exchanged perplexed looks.   
  
Crowley ran a hand across his face like he couldn’t believe he was here with these people.  
  
“What?” Sam tried.  
  
Chuck gave them both his most intense action hero scowl. “Look. If there’s one complaint that my books about your stupid lives have gotten more than any other, it’s that you two don’t hug each other enough when you should.” He glared at them both. When they just stared back at him with matching “The prophet’s lost his marbles” expressions, he threw his arms up in the air. “It’s the end of the goddamn world - for the love of crap, do you need a neon sign?”  
  
“But—” Dean started.  
  
“Honey, don’t,” Missouri said, at the same time that Castiel said, “Shut up, Dean.”  
  
“He’s right,” Crowley said, inspecting his watch. “I’ve read one of those books, and there were some grade-A macho gender tropes in it. If I didn’t know the author, I’d think you two were extensions of his own need to prove his hypermasculinity.”   
  
“Hey, I’m plenty masculine!” Chuck said.   
  
“Of course you are, lad,” Crowley said, rolling his eyes. “Now, will you two please hug so we can get on with trying not to get ourselves killed?”  
  
Sam and Dean faced each other, extended their arms and pulled each other into a hug. It was awkward and forced for a moment, but Sam’s hand took a fistful of Dean’s jacket and Dean pressed his cheek hard into his brother’s shoulder, and the whole thing drifted into Lifetime Movie Network territory real quick.   
  
“All right,” Dean barked. “Now, can we please get in there?”  
  
“One more thing,” Castiel said, and dragged him into a kiss.   
  
Crowley gave a low whistle.   
  
“Now we can go,” Castiel said, breaking away. Dean stared at him, stunned.  
  
“Keep behind me,” Sam said, retrieving his angel-killing sword from its sheath as he stepped out from under the trees.   
  
The dying chords of “Renegade” and the sounds of slaughter - hopefully the other guy’s side - rode with them to the basement door. Sam raised his hand to the door and focused for a second, and the lock clicked. Dean passed him a disapproving look as they snuck inside. The clashing and shooting and screaming muffled as the door shut behind them, leaving them alone in the unlit basement room.   
  
Missouri paused, turning her head like she was trying to make out a distant sound. “He’s upstairs, in the tower. He’s waiting for us - I can feel it.”  
  
“Anyone between us and him?” Sam said.   
  
“No.” Missouri frowned. “Cocky bastard.”   
  
“Lead on,” Dean said.   
  
Missouri took up the lead beside Sam, bringing them into the community room and up the stairs. The basement of the church was all modern facilities, and the stillness of it and the nerves in the air made Chuck feel like he was in one of those video games where the music fades out and something leaps out at you from the shadows. He hated those games. All he’d ever been good at were text-based adventures.  
  
Aw, crap. This was so not the time to start thinking about being eaten by a grue.  
  
Their footsteps landed on carpet for the first half of the stairs up, then hit stone and began to echo softly at the landing. The group tried to tread quietly, but by the time they reached the church’s main room, the shuffle of six sets of feet was just too much to pretend to be quiet. Missouri strode out ahead of the group, the tapping of the heels of her clogs echoing from one stained glass window to the next.   
  
Chuck’s gaze clung to the windows. They were all symbols - the cross, the burning bush, the flaming sword - and he knew one of them had to be the dove. Beside him, he heard Castiel swallow a gasp.   
  
The dove window was just over the altar, fifty yards in front of them.   
  
Chuck gripped Castiel’s shoulder, and Castiel swallowed, quickening his steps. Missouri tossed them a glance from the front, her mouth a tight line.  
  
The walk to the front of the church seemed to take hours. Chuck’s heart hammered in his ears, choking off his other thoughts. He closed his eyes and tried to write on the blank wall in his mind, laying out a better story about how this went.   
  
 _Lucifer expected them to come a different route than they did, and when he turned around, Dean had already pulled the trigger on the Colt and Sam was ramming a sword through his gut. He toppled from the tower, landing in a lifeless heap on the stone. Everyone cheered. The apocalypse was over, and everything was all right._  
  
“This is it,” Sam whispered as they turned right at the altar and faced the stairs to the tower. He gave Missouri, Crowley, Castiel, and Chuck a stern look. “Thank you - all of you. Stay here until—”  
  
“Until you give the signal,” Missouri said, shaking her head.   
  
“Right,” Dean said, unholstering the Colt.   
  
Sam and Dean went up the stairs, disappearing around the bend.   
  
Chuck craned his neck to try to see up the hollow center of the tower to the top. “What’s the signal? I missed it.”  
  
“Idiot number one calls something snarky at the devil,” Crowley said.  
  
“Oh, Lucy,” Dean’s voice echoed down the tower, “we’re home!”  
  
“That would be it,” Castiel said, his voice shaking.  
  
“That’s the best he can come up with?” Crowley sneered.  
  
Missouri elbowed him. “Give the boy a break, he’s under a lot of pressure.”   
  
They started up the stairs, weapons drawn - Crowley and Chuck with the Winchesters’ spare guns, Missouri with a blessed sword and dagger that Bobby had brought from home, and Castiel preparing to light the first of a series of holy oil-soaked Molotovs from the bag strapped to his hip. Overhead, a gunshot rang out and something heavy hit the floor.   
  
Crowley grabbed a whistle from his coat pocket and blew it, producing no sound.   
  
“What was that?” Chuck hissed.   
  
“Dog whistle,” Crowley said with a dangerous look. “Reinforcements.”  
  
Chuck had never heard hell hounds in person before, but he recognized the sound of their growls as it echoed in from the front doors of the church. It tore a shiver out of him.  
  
But the moment they reached the top of the tower, Chuck recognized another sound he’d written but never heard in person - a scream of pure grief.   
  
“SAAAMMM!”   
  
 _Sam was okay,_  Chuck wrote in his head.  _It was just a fake-out. He got up from where he’d been knocked down, stabbed Lucifer in the heart, and kicked the devil’s corpse into the gap. The apocalypse was over, and everything was all right._  
  
They ran the last few steps to the top. The tower room was a small square space with a gap in the floor beneath the hanging bells. Dean clung to the far wall over a series of cracking floorboards, the Colt hanging limply from his mangled hand. Opposite him, Lucifer held Sam over the gap in the floor by—  
  
“Oh god,” Missouri gasped, tears starting down her cheeks.   
  
The angel-killing sword protruded from Sam’s front, holding him up by his ribs.   
  
Chuck had time to think one thing:  _CRAP._  
  
Then Lucifer glanced over at them with a polite smile. “Hello, kids. I’m glad you came.” He let go of the sword hilt as easily as dropping a pebble, and Sam fell into the gap. Metal and flesh hit the stone floor two stories down, and selfishly, Chuck was glad he’d already thrown up everything in his stomach.   
  
Dean bit down a sob. “You son of a bitch!”  
  
“Language,” Lucifer scolded with a smirk. “My, my, you sound almost like you didn’t expect this to happen. Somebody’s got an overactive sense of ambition.” Holding Dean’s gaze, he gave a golf clap. “Though I’m impressed, as always, with your swagger.”   
  
Growls resonated up the tower, and the sound of great claws scrabbling up the wooden stairs. Crowley pressed himself against the wall and motioned for the others to do the same.   
  
Missouri crept to the back of the group and started down the stairs, staying flat against the wall. Chuck felt a leap of hope in his chest.   
  
 _The hellhounds made short work of Lucifer, Missouri retrieved the sword to finish the job, and they brought Sam back with a spell the next day, right as rain. The apocalypse was over, and everything was all right._  
  
“I’m gonna kill you,” Dean seethed, grabbing the Colt in his left hand.  
  
“Oh, you might have, according to Heaven’s backup plan,” Lucifer said.   
  
Dean pulled the trigger.   
  
…and Lucifer caught the bullet in his hand. “There are only so many of you champions who might have been able to do it. Two, to be exact - you and your dearly departed brother. And I’ve got you here, minus the one weapon that could maybe kill me. Once you’re out of the way, I can move on with the rest of my plans uninterrupte—”   
  
Howls drowned him out, and Chuck felt the stairs shake as Crowley’s hell hounds galloped up to the bell tower. Their heat rushed right past him, a bristle of fur brushing his arm. The sounds of their bodies rumbled straight at Lucifer.  
  
He froze them with a look. “Do you mind? We’re having a conversation here.”   
  
The hell hounds whimpered.   
  
Lucifer gave them a sour look, and his gaze flicked up to Crowley. “Find your master.”   
  
Crowley pushed off from the wall, swearing under his breath, and sprinted down the stairs. A thundering of clawed feet and a rush of hot breath followed him.   
  
In between the thuds of his own heart in his ears, Chuck heard the race continue out into the altar room. And Crowley’s scream, followed by a frenzied round of gunshots. And a tearing sound he hoped wasn’t what he thought it was.   
  
Lucifer listened impatiently. “And his sneaky psychic friend, too, if you would,” he called.   
  
Chuck’s heart stopped. Below came another scrabble of paws. He peered down into the gap and saw Missouri slash her sword at the air. The hell hound shrieked, an arc of blood falling on the floor. Something heavy fell, a puddle starting beneath it.   
  
A second invisible body hit Missouri in the chest, toppling her over as she struck blindly at it with her dagger. Chuck squeezed in closer to the wall and Castiel so he couldn’t see anymore.  
  
“Now,” Lucifer said, giving Dean an apologetic look, “where were we?”  
  
“This—this was your plan all along?” Dean said, his voice thick with tears.   
  
“Ah, yes, the monologue.” Lucifer smiled smugly. “I find those tedious, don’t you? Yes, this was my plan all along. You and your little dog, too; when everyone is special, no one will be; maniacal laughter, and so on. How about we skip the gloating and move on to the me killing you?”  
  
“NO!” Castiel yelled.  
  
Lucifer raised his fist to his mouth and gave it a light blow. The bullet he’d caught flew from his hand and caught Dean in the chest, buckling him over sideways with a choked sound.   
  
No. No, no, nonono.  _The apocalypse was over, and everything was all right. The apocalypse was over, and everything was all right. Everything was all right. Everything was all—_  
  
Castiel lobbed a holy oil Molotov at Lucifer and ran left toward Dean. The cracked boards broke apart under his feet, and he scrambled against the wall, grabbing the gaps between stones to pull himself along. “Dean,” he gasped, kneeling beside the hunter’s body.  
  
“Oh, this is just pathetic,” Lucifer said, and snapped his fingers.   
  
Castiel’s body lurched upright and flew across the gap to Lucifer.   
  
He grabbed the former angel by the throat and held him over the gap, peering at him with a look of mild annoyance. “It’s over, little brother. You, and this whole world, are headed to Hell.”  
  
“Screw you,” Castiel hissed, clawing at Lucifer’s hand.   
  
“Let him go!” Chuck yelled.   
  
Lucifer sighed dramatically and rolled his head toward Chuck. “At the risk of sounding like a Disney villain… Or what?”  
  
Chuck fired at the church bells. They clanged against each other with such force that Chuck felt the sound in his ribcage. He raised his hands to his ears, cringing.   
  
So did Lucifer, letting go of Castiel.   
  
Castiel seemed to hang in midair for a moment. Then he fell. Chuck jumped forward to look over the railing and saw Castiel land hard on something invisible. A yelp rent the air alongside the bells, and both Castiel and the last hell hound hit the ground. Castiel, at least, seemed to wince and move after.   
  
Chuck whooped, the sound getting lost amidst the cacophony. The moment of victory was short-lived as he realized three things:  
  
1\. Everyone else was lying dead around them.  
  
2\. Neither of them had the angel-killing sword.   
  
and  
  
3\. He was alone in the tower room with Lucifer glaring at him.   
  
So screwed. So very, deeply, completely  _screwed._  Maybe they could at least get away. Chuck raised the sawed-off again. Cans on a fence, he told himself. Cans on a fence.  
  
In three quick shots, he hit Lucifer twice in the lower legs, sending him toppling over long enough to make an escape. The stairs echoed almost as loudly as the bells under his feet as he sprinted and jumped back down to the first floor.   
  
Oh god. There was blood everywhere. His friends’ blood. Chuck swallowed, running to Castiel’s side and helping him up. “Come on, we’ve gotta get out of here.”  
  
“No,” Castiel said, wiping blood away from his upper lip. “Give me—give me two minutes—”  
  
“In two minutes you’ll be dead!” Chuck cried.   
  
Castiel cringed as he put weight on his left leg, but he moved to Sam’s body anyway, gripped the sword still in him, and pulled.   
  
Chuck swallowed again. “Ugh. That’s—that’s still got some Sam on it.”  
  
“Maybe that will be enough,” Castiel said. “The blood of a champion, just not the champion himself.”   
  
Overhead, the clanging of the bells halted. A shadow appeared in the floor between Chuck and castiel, and they both stumbled backwards.   
  
“Crap,” Chuck heard himself say. “Boss fight.”   
  
Lucifer landed with a surprising lack of pomp and circumstance - just a frown and a small sound of rubber against stone. One of his feet landed in a pool of blood, spattering red up the sides of his sneakers, and he took a moment to wipe his shoe off on Sam’s jeans before he stepped forward toward the two remaining members of the special probably-all-gonna-die mission.   
  
Chuck and Castiel backed up as Lucifer approached, stepping out of the tower. A few paces back, Chuck felt his shoulder knock into the altar. The afternoon sun poured in through the stained glass window behind the altar, casting the shape of the dove on the floor.   
  
There went his heartbeat again, disappearing. It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t just his heart but all the sounds around him that had stopped - all of them drowned out except for the faint ringing echo the bells had left in his head.  
  
He watched it happen like he watched his visions happen.   
  
Lucifer came for him first, roped a hand around his neck and dangled him over the bodies of his friends, saying something - probably something smug and threatening.   
  
Castiel yelled and ran forward, driving the blade of the angel-killing sword into Lucifer’s side.   
  
Lucifer swayed, grimacing. He dropped Chuck to the floor.   
  
For a moment, Chuck thought it had worked. The devil was going to keel over dead in front of them, and they’d have to figure out a way to bring back the rest of their friends, but hey, this was the Winchester Gospels, right? They’d saved the world. They’d find a way. There was always a way. There was always—  
  
Chuck’s hearing flooded back in a rush, just in time to hear Lucifer snarl. The devil whirled around and snapped the sword from Castiel’s hands. Before Castiel could react, Lucifer ran the sword into his middle and pushed him over onto the floor.   
  
Castiel made a horrible sound in his throat.   
  
Lucifer just sneered. “You really thought you could save him, Castiel? Shame they took your good sense along with your grace.”  
  
“CAAASS!” Chuck screamed.   
  
“Oh goodie, alone with the prophet,” Lucifer said, shaking his head. A whistle came from outside the church, and he sighed. “I’ll snap your neck in a minute - it sounds like I need to check on my cannon fodder. If you need anything between now and your untimely death, I’ll be outside killing the rest of your forces with my mind.”  
  
Chuck couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak. He crawled over to Castiel, stumbling over part of a hell hound, and slumped beside him. His friend’s eyes were wide open and dilated, and blood pooled thickly beneath him.   
  
“Castiel?” he tried, smoothing back his hair. “Cas, can you hear me? I’m here, buddy. You’re not alone. You’re not alone.”   
  
Not a breath. Not a blink. Castiel was already gone.   
  
“Cas,” Chuck whispered, his voice fading in his throat. He’d failed. He’d failed his best friend, the heroes who’d put up with him, and probably the whole of humanity. He felt hollowed out, a third-person narrator without a voice.   
  
Please, he begged silently. Please, don’t let it end like this. Please.   
  
It couldn’t end like this. It wasn’t right - it wasn’t fair! The hollow space inside him filled with rage. No. He wouldn’t let it end like this - not if he could help it. His limbs forced him up, and he started to walk, then run.  
  
Lucifer was halfway up the center aisle of the church when Chuck took a running leap at him from behind. He made an “Oof!” noise when the prophet hit his back and latched scrawny arms around his throat. Chuck scratched at him with his fingertips, kicked his heels into Lucifer’s legs, and—holy crap, he realized as he did it—he was biting the devil’s neck.   
  
He kicked Lucifer in the groin, and Lucifer leaned forward with a growl. “What are you, four?”  
  
“Take it back!” Chuck shouted. “All of it - all of them! Take it back!”  
  
Lucifer reached back, trying to pry the prophet off him, but couldn’t quite reach. “There are no take-backs in the apocalypse! And I will rend you limb from limb once I get my hands on you!”  
  
Chuck bit one of his fingers. “Go ahead and try! I’ve got an archangel watching my ass for just such an occasion.”   
  
Lucifer threw his head back, barely missing Chuck’s nose, and cackled. “Hell’s attack dogs bow to my commands and shirk away at the sight of me - you really think Heaven’s attack dogs are any different?” He grabbed one of Chuck’s ankles and yanked, making Chuck’s grip on his neck loosen—  
  
A crack echoed through the church, and light flooded in from the front doors.   
  
Chuck slipped from Lucifer’s back onto the ground, hands to his ears and face to the floor. It took him a few seconds to realize that the usual archangel voice wasn’t trying to tear his eardrums apart. And Lucifer wasn’t moving to kill him.   
  
Chuck raised his head from the floor and peered between Lucifer’s legs at the source of the light.   
  
Jesus stood in the doorway, light radiating from his outstretched hand, wearing hand-me-down cargo jeans and a wolf t-shirt. He was glaring straight at Lucifer with the most intense focus Chuck had ever seen on him. Chuck scooted behind a pew, out of Lucifer’s reach.  
  
“Oh, it’s you,” Lucifer said, sounding slightly less confident than a minute ago. “Come to concede defeat?”  
  
Jesus shook his head and took a step forward.   
  
Lucifer stepped back, passing Chuck’s row of pews. “Come to destroy me and claim victory for Heaven, then? As if you could.”  
  
Jesus shook his head again, his frown deepening as he took another step forward. Understanding passed between them.  
  
Lucifer’s eyes widened. “I’ll never go back there. That cage was—it was beyond Hell. You can’t imagine.”   
  
Jesus continued toward him, dropping his arms to his sides.   
  
Lucifer laughed. “You can’t make me surrender - who do you think you are?”  
  
Jesus stopped four rows down the aisle, opened his mouth, and projected.  
  
It was like the wave of emotion Chuck had felt him project in the den the day before, only stronger, and aimed right at Lucifer: pain. Even from a distance, the second-hand exposure was enough to knock Chuck to his side, wracked with sobs. Two-thousand years of humanity’s ugly side came with the projection. Chuck saw the events unfold rapid-fire, like frames of an animated gif: wars, hatred, stonings, assaults, ostracizing, and atrocities he didn’t even have names for.   
  
So this was what had turned Jesus silent - two millennia of pain issued by and against the human race he’d tried to protect, pain he was powerless to stop from the distance of Heaven. The guilt was suffocating - and contagious. Chuck felt the worst things he’d done welling up inside him once more, and then some. So, apparently, did the devil.  
  
Lucifer screamed and dropped to his knees. “I’m sorry!” he cried, bowing his head to the floor with a sob. “I’m—I’m so sorry! Oh, Father, all that I’ve done—all the pain I’ve caused—I’m sorry! Mercy—penance—please—”  
  
Jesus closed the distance between them and laid his hand on Lucifer’s head.   
  
Lucifer nodded. “Yes—yes, thank you…”  
  
Light poured from Jesus’s palm, engulfing the room.   
  
Chuck squeezed his eyes shut behind his hands. All sound and sensation drowned out for a minute, and then the room felt like it had when they’d first entered the church - except calmer, and with something missing.   
  
The light flooding in between Chuck’s fingers faded, and Jesus’s projection ceased pulling him apart. When all he could see behind his hands was the vague red of sunlight through his fingers, he parted them and looked up. Lucifer was gone - back in his cage.  
  
Jesus saves, Chuck thought - the rest of you take half damage. Oh…oh, god. The rest of them.  
  
Jesus stood a short distance away, holding something small and bright between his open hands. Chuck rose to his feet, peering at the thing. He thought he knew what it was, but when he got close, he was sure.  
  
Jesus held Castiel’s grace.   
  
Chuck swallowed. “Did you take that from Lucifer?”  
  
Jesus nodded, peering at the grace with a bit of a frown.  
  
Chuck couldn’t breathe for a second. He blinked back tears. “A-are you gonna…?”  
  
Jesus looked up at him with his brow furrowed and his lower lip drawn in, then looked back down to Castiel’s grace. He pushed his hands at Chuck. The gesture was a clear “You take it,” like he was handing back a baby he was nervous about dropping.   
  
Chuck cupped his hands and let the ball of grace-light roll into them. It was cushiony, with a slight weight, and it reminded him a little of the hacky sack bags he’d played with in college. But it was also warm - so warm - and had within it something like a tiny heartbeat. Chuck cradled it against his chest. “Hey, Cas,” he whispered.  
  
Jesus turned, his feet padding softly against the floor as he started away.  
  
“Wait,” Chuck said. “What do I do now?”  
  
The son of God glanced over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows.   
  
“Right. I’m the prophet. I should know this.” Chuck took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Okay. Focus.”  
  
He didn’t have a notebook to write in, so he started writing the scene on a blank wall in his mind. He scrawled the words “Castiel’s grace” to get started, and once he pulled at that plot line, the rest came cascading into place.  
  
 _The Prophet Chuck held his friend’s grace at his sternum, feeling it flutter like the wings of a sparrow settling onto a perch. His own heart drummed against it, way too loud. The heat that radiated from the grace warmed and calmed him throughout, drying the tears that were still wet on his cheeks. This small thing clutched in his curled fingers was holy. Loving. Powerful. It was an entire life - an eons-long one, at that - encapsulated in one tiny bit of light.  
  
Chuck knelt at Castiel’s side. The former angel was pale, his eyes fixed blankly at a distant part of the floor. Chuck held the angel’s grace against his own chest with one hand, using the other to undo the buttons of Castiel’s shirt. He slid aside the fabric, and there was the scar from where the grace had been torn out, smooth pink skin stretched just a bit too tight.   
  
Chuck lowered Castiel’s grace and placed it very carefully at the center of the scar. Once he was sure it was steady, he removed his hands.   
  
Castiel’s grace flared suddenly, like the appearance of an archangel but without the quaking or impending sense of doom. A sense of peace spread throughout the room. He felt it reach into the hearts of everyone there as if they were his own, spilling light in to break up their remaining doubt and fear.  
  
The grace sank through Castiel’s chest, the last of its glow lingering in a round patch just under the skin. Color flooded back into his face, and Chuck suddenly found his hands shaking. Castiel’s grace had been ripped from him months ago, before they’d gotten to know each other. Before Castiel had stopped being that imposing supernatural messenger of bad news and started being his friend.   
  
His friend. What if that wasn’t the Castiel that this would bring back?  
  
Castiel blinked hard, and his eyes took on that spacey angelic stare he’d been known for. He sat up slowly, his lips parted, taking in the room first, and then himself. He traced his fingers across the glowing patch of light at his chest as it faded, and then looked over at Chuck and narrowed his eyes.  
  
“I am Iron Man,” he said, his voice hoarse.  
  
The prophet Chuck gasped in tears and pulled his friend into a hug so tight it probably would have broken the ribs of a mortal man. The angel Castiel only laughed.  
  
With his newly restored grace, the angel brought his fallen allies back to life. Each rose from the floor better than before, their blood wiped clean. Finding Lucifer gone, they cried and whooped and hugged each other.   
  
The apocalypse was over - for real, this time. And everything was all right._  
  
Chuck stood with the scene written across the wall in his mind and Castiel’s grace beating in his hands. He smiled, knowing exactly what came next.


	5. Chapter 5

Chuck had written the paragraph dozens of time - hundreds, probably, counting the times in his head. It had been crammed into the margins of notebooks on occasions when he’d been weepy drunk, written on napkins at bars during bad dates and worse nights out alone, and scrawled on the backs of random envelopes on his bedside table at two in the morning. Back before the prophet plot line had begun, he’d always figured it would be the final words of the Supernatural series - someday, when he was ready to be done writing it. The paragraph read:  
  
 _Sam and Dean finally made it to the Grand Canyon - and not the Morton House kind of Grand Canyon but the literal one, a great divide in the rock of the earth. Dean pulled off the road at a scenic overlook, and they sat on the hood of the car all afternoon, splitting a six-pack while the tourists around them snapped photos and complained about leg cramps. As night fell, Sam put on Led Zeppelin. The two brothers sat on the still sun-warmed hood of the Impala, silently toasting to their mom, each other, and the classics, while the canyon stretched between horizons in front of them._  
  
He’d been right - those were the last words he’d ever write about the Winchesters. The moment he’d written “The End” below them on the Google doc for the climactic Supernatural book (working title: Deus Ex Machina - Sam’s suggestion), he knew the visions were over. The story was done with him.   
  
What surprised Chuck most about the ending was that he wasn’t ready to be done with the story. Parts of the Winchester Gospel had sucked epic amounts of ass to write - never mind being involved in them personally - and he’d earned enough emotional scars in the process to last a lifetime, but…dammit, it was the best thing he’d ever written. And the most successful - hell, the series had like five LiveJournal communities dedicated to it! Plus, y’know, he’d helped save the world. He’d talked with Jesus personally and seen the devil himself drop to his knees seeking redemption. Not many people could say that - except maybe country singers, and Chuck was pretty sure they were speaking metaphorically.   
  
And then there were his characters. Friends. Weird surrogate family. Whatever.   
  
Sam and Dean had taken off the moment everything was settled, and no one faulted them for it. They’d be back eventually, once they’d processed the whole apocalypse thing.   
  
Crowley’s first act upon being resurrected by an angel had been to shake off a case of the willies, smooth the wrinkles out of his Armani jacket, and announce to all his demon chums on the front lawn that they were going out for a post-averted-apocalypse pie run. When the rest of the group got back to Missouri’s, the demons’ tents and things were gone. They didn’t come back in the week that Chuck stayed afterwards, and he suspected Crowley was actually leading them out to that pie shop in Wisconsin - probably trying to get as far as possible from the angel cooties in Lawrence.   
  
Missouri had launched straight into cleanup mode when she got home, repairing broken doors, painting over sigils and demons’ drinks stains on the walls, and replanting her trampled flower beds. Bobby helped, even though everyone knew he didn’t give a damn about antique doors or flower beds. Chuck had gotten about two bars into the “Bobby and Missouri, sitting in a tree” song before Bobby shut him up with the “Your ass, framed on my mantle” song. Chuck pretended not to notice the blush in the old man’s cheeks as he spat out the threat.   
  
As for Castiel… Castiel was different now - not in the ways that Chuck had feared, but in quieter, more subtle ways. He moved more fluidly and held a glass with greater care, as if he might break it. He no longer licked his lips as much - probably because his no-longer-human body could do its own magical Chapstick thing. He tilted his head more, peered more, and observed the world more like it was a strange rock he’d landed on. And he was, overall, quieter, but not in a bad way. It was like those times in the car before, when he’d already spent an hour singing at the top of his lungs and was now content to spend some time watching the landscape slide by outside. In short, he was more like the Castiel that Chuck used to write. But he was still every bit his friend.  
  
At least, Chuck thought so. It was hard to tell. There was so much to do at Missouri’s, and so much for Chuck to write down, that the two of them had been constantly busy, and then Castiel had angeled off to check on Heaven with one of those crappy “Until we meet again” goodbyes. Chuck had always hated those goodbyes in movies. They were such a cop-out. Okay, so the two characters from different worlds had met and bonded and forever changed one another, and now that the action was over, they were just gonna be friends on a “whenever we happen to bump into each other” basis? That sucked. Where was the compromise? Where was the building of common ground to keep them together? It was like  _Lord of the Rings_  all over again. Freaking hobbits. Freaking Gimli and Legolas bromance. Freaking Annie Lennox song that always made him cry. The remaining members of the fellowship should’ve held a semi-annual retreat weekend at Aragorn’s new crib, goddammit.   
  
Chuck blinked hard, not sure if he was tearing up over hobbits or his own friends. The road in front of him wavered slightly with tears, then steadied. He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel and cleared his throat. “So, where do you want me to drop you off?”  
  
Jesus tapped the window, pointing at the IHOP off the interstate. He’d been curled up in the passenger seat of Chuck’s station wagon when Chuck went to leave Missouri’s, a backpack full of spare clothes and paper for origami balloons at his feet and a map of Illinois open in his lap. It was a different sort of road trip with Jesus playing copilot - quieter, calmer, and with a constant stream of commercial-free hits from the mid-80’s playing mysteriously through the speakers. The dude seemed to have a thing for Tears For Fears.  
  
“Okay,” Chuck said, taking the nearest exit. “You do know there’s no Shermer, Illinois?”  
  
Jesus chuckled.   
  
“Just checking.”  
  
They pulled into the IHOP parking lot, and Jesus stuffed the map into his backpack and slung it over his shoulder.   
  
“So,” Chuck said, stopping at the curb, “you owe me thirty bucks for gas.”  
  
Jesus frowned, then shrugged and dug in the front pocket of the backpack, pulling out a canvas wallet Missouri had given him.  
  
Chuck shook his head with a laugh. “No, man, I’m kidding. You saved the world - of course you get a free ride. It’s cool. I just—”  
  
Jesus paused with his hand on the door handle, waiting.   
  
Chuck let out a deep breath. “I just—I’ve got so many questions I want to ask you. What happens now? Is there some other religion’s big bad waiting to step up next? What’s going to happen to the angels? Why are we here? Am I supposed to just go home and pretend all of this never happened? What are you gonna do in Illinois? How did you get to the church from Missouri’s house?”   
  
Jesus smiled and let himself out of the car. The old station wagon groaned. Jesus took a step as if to close the door, then turned around and ducked his head down into Chuck’s line of sight. Extending his arm, he offered a fist bump, and Chuck took it. Jesus opened his lips, and from between them came a hoarse voice:   
  
“Bus pass.”   
  
Grinning broadly, the son of God shut the door and started off toward the front doors of the IHOP.  
  
Chuck sat there with his mouth hanging open for a few seconds. Then he leaned over to the open passenger side window and yelled, “Where did you get a bus pass?”  
  
Jesus waved a hand over his shoulder but didn’t turn back.   
  
Chuck sighed, leaning back in his seat, and said a silent prayer:  _Take care of yourself._  Jesus had left an origami balloon in the footwell of the passenger seat. Chuck picked it up and hung it from the rearview window with a bit of string. Turning off the broken radio, he pulled away from the curb and started the drive home.   
  
***  
  
Chuck’s ramshackle house was even more ramshackle than he’d left it - so much so that he almost didn’t recognize it. If the route home hadn’t been programmed into his mental autopilot feature from decades of living there, he might’ve missed the driveway. The front lawn was a meadow of tall grass and nettles, the driveway scattered with shingles and cardboard. Someone had covered the gaping hole in the side of the house with a haphazardly nailed tarp, and someone else had evidently looted the garage.   
  
Suckers. He didn’t have anything worth stealing in there - all the valuable action figures were wrapped in plastic in his spare bedroom.   
  
Chuck pulled into his driveway, shuffled up the walk, yanked the “Abandoned Building” notice off the front door, and put his key in the lock. The door fought against him in its usual stubborn door way - at least that was one thing that hadn’t changed. He manhandled the doorknob, shoved his shoulder against the door, and slammed it behind himself.  
  
He stood for a minute in the entryway, breathing in the lingering smell of old carpet and liquor and trying to ignore the pigeons roosting on the mantle beside his mother’s antique lamp.   
  
“I’m home,” he called, to no one in particular, and dropped his keys on the shelf next to the door. They fell with a clink to the floor. Oh, right - the archangel smote that shelf. The archangel had smote almost everything he could see, actually - and what it hadn’t touched, the local wildlife had turned into food or nests. He thought he heard a raccoon shuffling around in the kitchen.   
  
Well, that was…disconcerting. Oh, well. All he had to do was call Animal Control, and that’d be fixed soon enough. And call the city to let them know his house wasn’t abandoned. And the cable and electric companies, to pay his outstanding debts. No biggie.   
  
Chuck shucked off his shoes by the door and tromped upstairs. The second floor was scattered with leaves, and it took until he reached his bedroom to figure out where they’d come from - a goddamn tree branch had fallen through the wall over his bed, probably knocked down by some apocalyptic storm or other.   
  
Crap. Okay. This was fine. The world wasn’t over, he was home, and it would all be okay in the end. He’d go back to his normal life, maybe accept one of those convention invites to sell more books, and pay to get all the damages fixed. He could do it. And then he’d have his old life back in, what? Three months, tops. It would be easy to slip back into - writing fueled by cheap liquor, avoiding fan mail and creditors, watching  _Xena: Warrior Princess_  reruns until 2am. A quiet, not particularly notable life.   
  
Chuck’s favorite bathrobe was lying in a lump on the floor. He picked it up, shook the squirrel droppings off it, and wrapped it around himself, sitting down on the edge of his bed. Dead leaves crunched beneath him, and a twig prodded his arm. He grabbed the whole branch it was attached to, tore off what he could, and threw it across the room.   
  
Curling up on his bed, the former prophet broke down and cried.   
  
***  
  
The city courthouse’s hold music was smooth jazz, which made Chuck think they  _wanted_  him to be pissed off by the time they patched him through to whoever he needed to talk to about this abandoned house thing. He paced the newly swept floor of his bedroom, then out onto the landing, then into the guest room and back, running over his story in his head.  
  
Missing for four months. No recollection at all of what happened. Possible psychotic break or head injury.   
  
Amnesia - classic. He hadn’t used that trope nearly as much as he would’ve liked to in his writing, thanks to the Winchesters and their stupid thick skulls that seemed impervious to brain injuries. It seemed to be serving him well now, though - so far the electric company and one concerned neighbor had already bought it.  
  
Chuck was just starting down the stairs when the jazz cut out and a cheerful voice said, “Good morning, Mr. Shurley. My name is Kelly. I’m told you need to get some things sorted out with the status of your home?”  
  
“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “Y’see, I’ve, uh, sort of been a missing person for the last four months, and I just got home last night to find this notice on my do—” He stopped cold, almost slipping on the next step.   
  
Castiel stood in the middle of the living room, reading something on yellowed paper. He was wearing his old trench coat, now over a pair of jeans and his hand-me-down Bad Religion t-shirt.  
  
“Sir?” said Kelly, on the other end of the line.  
  
“I, uh…hold on a sec,” Chuck said, covering the phone’s mouthpiece with his hand. Then, to Castiel: “Hey.”   
  
“Hello, Chuck,” said the angel, not looking up. He turned the page on the thing he was reading, and Chuck caught sight of a colored pencil drawing on the next page.   
  
“What’re you reading?”   
  
“A story,” Castiel answered, glancing up at him with a smile. “About a young boy named Chuck whose best friend is a dinosaur unstuck in time.”   
  
Oh good freaking lord. Chuck swallowed, rushing down the rest of the stairs, and grabbed the pages out of Castiel’s hand. “Don’t read that. It’s crap.”   
  
“I enjoyed it,” Castiel said, frowning at the empty space between his hands where the pages had been. “That was my third read-through. I think it would make an excellent basis for a novel.”  
  
Chuck scoffed, gave the pages a moment’s consideration, then shook his head. “Nobody wants to read that.”  
  
“I would,” Castiel said sincerely.   
  
“Mr. Shurley?” said the phone.   
  
Chuck brought it back to his ear. “Yeah, sorry, just another minute.” Covering the mouthpiece again, he hissed, “I thought you were supposed to be in Heaven.”  
  
“I was. For a few difficult months.” The angel flicked a leaf off the couch that Chuck had found him lying across back in May. “Time passes differently there.”  
  
“So…shouldn’t you be catching up with your boyfriend?”   
  
“Dean is with Sam. I’ll see him when they return from their family vacation. Anyway, I have more important business here.”   
  
Chuck’s chest clenched. “What is it? Did Lucifer get out again? Are we all gonna die? Oh god, we’re all gonna die, aren’t we?”   
  
“Um, sir?” said the phone. He ignored it.   
  
“Actually,” Castiel said, drawing something out of his trench coat pocket, “I had to give you this.”   
  
Chuck reached out, and the angel dropped the object into his hand - a cassette of Ace of Base’s  _The Sign_ , still in its original case. He didn’t know what to say.   
  
Castiel moved to the door and opened it. “I thought it would be a good soundtrack for a road trip.”   
  
Chuck turned the cassette over in his hand, letting his grip slip on the phone. “Where to?” he said.   
  
Castiel shrugged. “Anywhere we like. There’s a whole world out there, still intact. And eons of time at my disposal.” He gave Chuck a sly look over his shoulder, letting himself out the front door. “In case you’d like to, say, meet a real dinosaur. For book research.”   
  
Chuck stood there for a minute with the phone dangling from his right hand and the Ace of Base tape clutched in his left.   
  
“Mr. Shurley?” said the phone.   
  
Castiel leaned back into the doorway, giving him a curious look. “Well? Are you coming?”  
  
Chuck raised the phone to his ear, licked his lips, and said, “Uh, Kelly?”  
  
“Yes?”   
  
“Never mind. Thanks for your time.” Hanging up the phone, Chuck let it fall to the floor.   
  
Castiel grinned.   
  
Grabbing his shoes and a spare notebook from the mess in the living room, Chuck locked up his house for the last time and followed the angel outside.   
  
As they pulled out of the driveway in the station wagon, Castiel asked, “So, where should we start?”  
  
Chuck surveyed the road in front of them and felt his heart pounding in his chest. Passing his best friend the Ace of Base tape and a grin, he said, “How about side A?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincerest thanks go out to the readers who left feedback while this 'verse was a WIP, the peer pressurers who egged me on to continue after Apocrypha, and the handful of friends who beta read various and sundry bits in the dead of night. This is your 'verse, folks. It would not exist without you. And I'm so grateful that you made it happen, because two years after the final chapter was posted, it's still my favorite thing I've produced in this fandom.


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